The progression of a Young UK Genset manufacturer

As I am writing this I am looking over the new version of our Constant Power Solutions Brochure which is now in its 3rd version. This is quite an amazing feat, which when the company started during a time of austerity, a lot of competitors thought we were mad and that we would not last long.

I was not employed by the company when CPS first started off, but I was there in spirit, after working with both Daniel and Victor in the past. I always took a keen interest in CPS from the early days. The plan was always to be a complete UK Built manufacturer using UK and EU Components.

Any way before I digress further. I started with the company back in October 2015, when I started at the company it was just myself (UK Sales) Daniel Arnett (Sales Director) and Victor (MD) and one engineer. The company was going reasonably well, building mainly small opensets for the international market. The UK Market pre-myself was minimal. My target was to look for generator dealers and installers. The early months was a hard thought out process. We had no brochure or marketing material in place and we were competing with established generator dealers who were working with the main manufacturers. I strategically picked out several dealers in certain areas concentrating on the smaller sets. The likes of 9kva to 60kva. This seem to be our sweet spot. We were building several a week and winning orders due to our lead time and competitive price. I also brought in another ex-colleague of mine to work with us on the marketing side of the business. This was when we first introduced our first brochure. We changed our logo to make it more appealing and started to look at social media a lot more, especially LinkedIn and producing adverts and blog posts like below.

It seemed perfect for CPS as the UK Market started to grow for CPS, the international market was working in a similar way. Asia, Middle East and Africa where all keen on a new UK Manufacturer and where purchasing the smaller sets soundproof and opensets. Our international dealers, were impressed with the smaller sets and then they started pushing for us to build larger sets. We build a 1000kva openset and a 500kva soundproof set, it seemed the larger we got the more we were getting asked for.

We then introduced our second brochure, this brochure kept a lot of the same information from the previous but with added Hybrid system as well. We also started looking at trade shows and have been to several trade shows as guests since then.

The international market now has several authorised dealers in certain countries who only push CPS from 5kva to 2250kva. We have supported our international dealers and built several synchronisation generators from 500kva to 1250kva. We have met many lovely people who have travelled for days just to visit our facilities. We have trained engineers on our generators for the international market and given them all the support and tools required.

The UK Market as well has gone from strength to strength. I have gone from fighting with small orders of 9kva and 20kva, to competing on tenders supporting our dealers with 100kva, 200kva, 500kva. I have travelled the length of the country to complete site visits with our dealers to help them win orders. We have working with our dealers won many projects including Private and NHS Hospitals, Academies and universities, as well as Grade 1 listed buildings for Dukes. We have also worked with many data centres (genset only) for complete back up. I have supported many of our farmers and helped them size the right generator for their production facilities as well as leisure centres, and brand new build apartment blocks. We have had several of our generators used as emergency power for lifts and fire evacuation. The list is endless, and more and more people are putting the faith in our production.

Where will we go in 2017? Hopefully the only way is up, and I am so glad to be a part of this progression. Brochure version three will have a lot more products in including emission.