No one likes to 'fail', but I can proudly say that Viking Signs failed to win the national Manufacturing SME of the Year award last night. It wasn’t because we're not good enough, but because there are so many great UK manufacturing businesses doing amazing things: innovating, creating, learning and supporting their teams to survive and even thrive through this period of the greatest disruption to normal business and normal life that many of us have ever experienced. It's an honour to stand among them.
After a run this morning, a good breakfast and some time to reflect on the journey home, I started to think about what we can learn from this experience, just as we always do at Viking when things don't go our way. We want the widest possible audience to hear our message about the twin 'superpowers' of lean on-demand digital manufacturing and empowering teams to learn about and use their strengths in order to excel. We'll be back.
We stand proud of the achievements of our 20-strong team; out of 140,000 UK manufacturing SMEs we just ranked in the top five! Congratulations to all the finalists, and thanks to Make UK for helping us all to showcase the amazing UK manufacturing – but mostly thanks to the 20 strong Vikings for making every day great.
Darren Joint
Managing Director, Viking Signs
Honoured to be shortlisted at the Make UK AwardsHonoured to be shortlisted at the Make UK