After a career in finance, and then five years working for Customade Group, Will Gold stepped up to the CEO role last September. A year on, how is the business looking?
“The past year has gone by in a heartbeat,” said Will Gold, CEO of Customade Group, on his first year in the job. “The group has had a bumpy path. But we’ve made some really good progress. The business is now totally different,” he added.
“After David Leng left, shareholders wanted to appoint a permanent CEO from within the group; someone who knew the people and had strong internal relationships. I had turned Stevenswood around and started to grow it. I’d helped build a really great team. So I was asked to consider the role. It was an easy yes.
“I’m an accountant by training. In all of my CFO roles I got involved in the commercial side of business. I even ran procurement for an oil and gas business where I oversaw £25m-worth of spend.
“As I hadn’t been in the home improvement industry previously, I didn’t have a preconceived idea of how things work. What I do have is lots of clever people already working at Customade, who I can challenge about why things work the way they do, and how we can improve. That can be really powerful.”
“We had a divisional structure, and the Customade businesses were quite separate,” he added. “We now have more cross-functional teams.
“Together, we work on addressing questions like: How do we measure quality? And how can we achieve a consistent OTIF so that we can effectively assess performance across the business? We work towards a Customade strategy, rather than separate ones for Polyframe, aluminium and doors.”
“At Customade, we are a team of people running the business in a different way, trying to do our best for customers,” explained Will. “We hold board meetings in each of our different facilities, so that everyone gets to experience each part of the business.
“I’m lucky to be in an organisation the size of Customade. I get to work with lots of amazing people.
“We hire really good people who are experts in different areas. We want to create an environment where they all feel valued, motivated and empowered to make suggestions, rather than being scared they’ll be shot down.”
This is a shortened version of an article from Glass and Glazing Products (GGP) Magazine. To read the full version, in the October 2023 edition of GGP, click here.
