“We are delighted to reporting this news on our fifth birthday” says Motion29 co-director, Andrew Wilkinson “but it hasn’t always been easy. In the early days we had no landline in our unit and couldn’t even get a signal on our mobile phone. We spent the first few weeks in business sat in the car park just so we could make calls in order to generate some custom!”
Andrew, former sales manager at Woodhead Connectivity (since taken over by Molex), was approached by his now business partner and Woodhead colleague, Steve Fisher, about the possibility of going into business together. “He told me to go away and get on with my work” laughs Steve “And I don’t blame him – I just came up with the idea out of the blue but didn’t have a clue what the business would be.”
Later that week in a bizarre twist of fate, Andrew took a call from one of his main stockists and learnt that they had stopped distributing Bircher products, meaning that the industrial safety manufacturer was now looking for a new UK distributor. “That was the light bulb moment” says Steve. I did some research over Christmas, and on Boxing Day I invited Steve to the pub and told him that now I knew what our business should be. We arranged a meeting with Bircher and the rest is history.”
Motion29 now employs a team of four and has expanded its product range to include some of the best international brands on the market including Patlite, Hummer and Jay’s Electronique.