Business innovation - survival, transition and growth

Hi everyone and welcome along to today's Business Innovation webinar. My name is Julia Foley from Scottish Enterprise and I'm just going to take you over some quick housekeeping so that you know how to participate in today's event. You will have joined the webinar using your computer's audio, but if you would prefer to join over the telephone, just select the telephone option in the audio pane, which is normally displayed on the right-hand side of your screen, and the dial in information should be displayed there.

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You're going to hear from two companies on today's webinar, about their journeys. But before you hear from them, I'd like to pass over to Jane Martin – Scottish Enterprises Managing Director for Business Services and Advice.

Thanks very much Julia, and could I just extend my welcome to all of you for joining us today. My name is Jane Martin, I’m Managing Director of Business Services and advice at Scottish Enterprise. So, you know, I'm responsible for a lot of the support services that we deliver as an organization. And I'm delighted to have ACS joining us today and also MAGE Control Systems.

It goes without saying that, you know, the past two years have been real challenges for all of us, and there's been a law change, at pace, a lot of challenges for us in our personal lives, and a lot of challenges as well for businesses. We've had to adjust really quickly to this new reality and a whole range of different challenges for businesses. This urgent and almost brutal need to become more resilient to adapt quickly, to be able to think differently about our workplaces who we employ, upskilling our staff, workplace practices, a whole raft of different things that businesses have had to face into. The two companies we're going to hear about today have really faced into those challenges. They've taken the opportunity to adapt and innovate, and I'm sure that you'll get a lot out of their stories.

We're going to hear a second from Janet Menzies who is the Chief Operating Officer at MAGE Control Systems, it’s an East Kilbride based engineering firm and the other collaborative approach to product development, helping them deliver creative and innovative solutions for a whole range of clients. They supply products to a wide range of domestic and international market sectors from aerospace, oil and gas, medical, renewables, subsea, and energy.

Unlike many companies COVID-19, meant that they had to adapt really quickly. Their business model rapidly responding, not just to their own needs as a business, but also the needs of the emergent needs of the industry that they serve and society more generally. But by staying alert to new opportunities and using their technological expertise, being very clear about their asset and their value, they were able to solve emerging problems.

But first up we're going to hear from Anthony Burns. Anthony is Chief Operating Officer of Advanced Clothing Solutions, a very different company CS is based at Eurocentral in Lanarkshire, and a leading enabler of fashion industry's circular economy.

ACS have really transformed their core business model from a business focused on highland wear hire to offering end to end fulfilment and garment refurbishing for fashion rental and resale brands.

The aim is to tackle this idea of fast fashion, and as consumers become much, much more aware of their environmental footprint around fashion, ACS is capitalizing on these shifting behaviours by offering more sustainable alternatives to garment ownership, renting second-hand, that kind of thing.

I think what's really interesting to me about ACS is that every decision that they take is influenced by this commitment to sustainability. You know, we had we had COP26 in November in Glasgow and it's really high up in the policy agenda and they’ve been really thinking about how they reduce their own environmental impact through the business model as well. And I think not least, that's actually seen a reduction in their costs around waste by 70%, so some really interesting stuff there as well for people to think about.

Anthony, I'll hand over to you, I'll be joining the panel at the end as well so if there's any questions, I can answer about the kind of support and help that we could provide to companies like those of you on the webinar as you move forward and innovate, I’d be delighted to do so.

Anthony, over to you. Thanks.

Thank you, Jane. Fantastic summary, just adding some colour to that in terms of ACS.

Who are we know? We facilitate circular business models ones in the fashion industry, which decouple economic growth from the extraction of natural virgin resources. But that makes it even more incumbent on us as a team to deliver these models in a sustainable way.

And that's what we are endeavouring to do with the support of Scottish enterprise and supporting agencies because it's only by delivering these models in a sustainable way that we will accelerate the adoption of these modules by our partners, brands, and retailers we work with, and ultimately, the consumers. And it really is important that we do this.

Jane mentioned COP26 and we certainly tried to use it as a vehicle to realize change from the fashion industry, but we found that the fashion industry was not seen as important as energy, oil, transport, shipping, aviation. So we're trying to raise the profile on that and it's important, the fashion industry has some horrific stats in terms of the damage it does to the environment and also the damage it does to people working in supply chain. Couple of stats – it’s the second biggest polluter globally after oil. It contributes more to CO2 emissions than aviation and shipping put together. So that's why we are trying to be entirely different to the rest of the fashion industry with what we offer.

I will move on to the first slide. So this is a little bit of history of ACS, we established 25 years ago, and one store this in the Saltmarket in Glasgow, it’s called Gilt Edged, we still own that store and we started renting Men's formalwear, highland-wear, kilts and jackets from that store and we grew and flourished into becoming the largest kilt rental company globally. And in 2006, we started renting men’s formalwear to retailers across the high street, Slaters Menswear being one of them and in 2011 we bought our largest competitor, and we eventually were shipping 350,000 outfits annually. Each outfit has seven items in it, so it's a few million items every year -predominantly for black tie event and weddings.

In 2014, we replicated this model and we set up a business from Memphis, in Tennessee. Why Memphis, Tennessee? Because FedEx are based their and it’s a great shipping location. You can hit 66% of US ZIP codes from Memphis in two days by road. So it was an interesting opportunity.

At the moment now, we're focused just on the UK, our investor in UK still invests in the business in the US. But despite that, in the US we managed to vertically integrate with two of the largest tux rental companies in the US. But now we're back in the UK, things have changed in the UK. Clothing rental is still very big for men's formalwear, but the real growth area is for non-menswear, it’s for ladies’ fashion, baby clothing, for subscription rental and for resale, which we'll touch on later.

We also now support Moss Bros in terms of the 3PL (third party logistics) service and in terms of sustainability and circularity we are working hard to be recognized as a circular business, I’ll touch on that later.

Next, I'm going to play a short video, the video shows our facility. It’s only 60 seconds and it covers a resale. Although rental is growing rapidly, resale, and the use of second-hand clothing and accessories is growing at an even faster rate. And it's expected that resale will be bigger than fast fashion by end of this decade. We are well placed to capitalize on it and this video will show you some of the things that we do. It’s a small Skiwear company, and but we do this for bigger brands and retailers across the UK.

Play the video, please.

Thank you.

So, in terms of resale that showed you a little bit of our facility, some of the things that we do, Hopefully, in 60 seconds it articulates, or it shows better what I can articulate in 15 minutes.

So, our facility, we have one in the UK – it’s 85,000 square foot and it’s based out at Eurocentral but it’s reallt about 250,000 with different Mezzanines and floors that are in there and it’s purpose built. It really supports the circular business models of rental, ecommerce, and it is purpose built for returns. Many 3PL (third-party logistics) are set up for outbound. Virtually everything we send out, it comes back then we clean it, we repair it, we sanitize it.

We have an automated solution, picking multiple items for packages is difficult so having automation which can pick 5000 items per hour, support what we're trying to do. We use RFID technology, RFID’s don’t need line of sight and to be able to scan them, you can get multiple scans and it really supports us with data management, because clothing rental and resale is all about control of data.

The steam tunnels can press 1500 items per hour and we have over one million flat packed items.

I’ll quickly touch on our technology. The biggest barriers to clothing rental and resale and the use of second-hand clothing, was a perception that clothing is dirty.

So, we introduced, about eight years ago, ozone technology. Fundamentally, it does two things. It kills gems and it removes odour. It’s highly effective, to medical grade standard and it’s effective against COVID and SARS and basically, it's very environmentally friendly. Ozone gas occurs naturally in the stratosphere, which is high up in the atmosphere, so basically, we pump in ozone gas into a chamber and one of those oxygen atoms wants to break away, to create o2 and the oxygen atom oxidizes germs and odour and it removes them. So that helps mitigate, concerns over cleanliness of items, but also, it’s low energy and it doesn't use water, it doesn't use chemicals and it doesn't degrade the garments. Traditionally, one would need to wash or dry clean these garments, and that's why ozone technologies is really good for us.

We currently have a patented machine, which is in production that we had support from Academia and Innovate UK to build one, which is an automated version of this, which will hopefully be a profoundly positive thing for the fashion industry as a whole.

So in terms of the partners we work with, many of you have heard of ACS, but you're probably heard of Slaters, and Next. Cameron Ross is our brand bit which we provide clothing rental to independent menswear and bridal shops across the UK. We also do re-commerce, Dinoski down at the bottom -that was a little yellow suits that you saw. But we support brands like Net-A-Porter for this as well.

Before Christmas, we had tens of thousands of ASOS items on-site, and we were cleaning and repairing these items and returning to ASOS. Because these items have been out in E-com, come back with a button that’s come off or there's a mark on it, and they would have potentially been picked up by a jobber and could have ended up in landfill, had we not stepped in.

These models are more profitable for the retailer and more sustainable. We also do the same job for Whistles, Hobbs and Phase Eight.

In terms of rental fulfilment, it used to be men’s formalwear, but we now support a variety, about seven different dress rental companies across the UK, including the largest. Some of these dress rental companies have tech platforms that sit behind them and we were starting to now on-board, new clothing rental partners like decathlon. We will be renting tents with them, starting soon. We’ll be renting garments from Oasis, from French connection soon, so clothing rental will be the main stay of how we all consume fashion for many years to come.

In terms of the ones we see here: Castle was a US company that facilitates clothing rental in the US for big brands like Banana Republic, Loft, Ralph Lauren, and what we do is we support them in the UK with the fulfilment operation. And currently, we do that for Moss Bros and L.K. Bennett, and that’s growing rapidly. It’s a lot bigger in Asia and the US than it is in the UK. And that's because in the UK, we have a culture of ownership dedicated in the fact that we all own our own homes. However, it’s changing. We lease so many things, we lease music like Spotify, we lease cars. We lease hotel rooms, we sleep in other people’s beds in hotel rooms and we don't think anything about it, especially in terms of cleanliness, but we have always have a bit of reluctance to rent clothes.

In terms of our strategic aim, many of these are based around sustainability we’re talking to the UN, we’ve had several calls with them. We've been talking to politicians at Westminster and Holyrood about the elimination of VAT from rental clothing. Because we’d see this if government officials in the UK and beyond are serious about sustainability then they've got incentivize the consumer to make more environmentally friendly decisions.

We want to become a recognized circular business. We think we're making progress. We actually first sort of realised this when Ken Maxwell from Scottish Enterprise said to us at an Environmental awards, the VIBES awards several years ago, he said to us that you’re actually acting as a circular business and it encouraged us to do more and focus on all the things we're doing. We're actually saving money but at the same time, being more sustainable. And he helped us win environmental business awards, we’ve won three now and the basics like achieving zero waste to landfill. We did this, and we cut our waste management bill by 70%, but at the same time, we reduced our waste by 26 tonnes in one year and nothing in our site goes to landfill now.

We reduced our carbon emissions, or we're trying to reduce them to zero. Our target is net zero next year. We're currently carbon neutral. We include scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions as part of that. So scope 3 emissions is me driving to work, is all our parcels being delivered across the UK and we know we use carbon neutral delivery partners, and their scope three emissions are our scope one. So we are double offsetting.

We want to convert to 100% renewable energy. We've done that already for electricity and gas. But we have a new plans in terms of biofuel, we have solar panels going on the roof of our building. And all our calculations for carbon neutrality, we get them signed off by an external partner called climate partner, who independently and externally verify these in conjunction with academia, so no one can accuse us of greenwashing in terms of what we do.

I mentioned ozone in terms of cleaning systems, we also use ozone gas in water, in our laundry systems where it's sanitizes, garments at a low temperature and it means we can use cooler water, temperatures under 45 degrees Celsius. And we do need to have as much mechanical action or as much chemicals in the drum liquid to realize the same type of cleaning. We’ve just published some technical papers on this because we believe its world leading in terms of the research we've done in conjunction with University of West Scotland and Envite UK.

Our staff, they're our biggest and best asset and it is important we support them, and we do this with, we’ve got mental health and well-being, we’ve got healthy living awards on site or healthy living eating, we’ve got Meat-Free Monday, Weight-Watchers Wednesday, small but important things. And we also, we have an SQA accredited training centre onsite a great support from Skills Development Scotland to realise that and we can now offer vocational qualifications in sewing products, logistics, and textile care. Some of them are bespoke to ACS bespoke to rental and it means that when we work with staff, regardless of who it is - agency staff, Kickstarters, and we work with the Scottish prison service as well where we help rehabilitate staff. And we have given them jobs at the end of this, but they all get vocational qualifications internationally recognized as part of this. We're also working with disadvantaged groups with a DYW on this, also and DWP too. And 16% of the workforce now registered disabled so we're finding that we are getting really good candidates with great attitude who turn up on time and are willing to learn and they are really supporting us in terms of creating our own talent pipeline as we see great growth.

We also have a biodiversity facility around our site. We recognise that we don't want to be a big tin shed with broken pallets and cardboard and plastic blowing about the yard, so we've got Beehives on-site, we have a green wall at reception. We have an wormery which, our food waste goes into the wormery. Worms create compost, that compost goes into a polypropylene tunnel, and we grow fresh fruits and veg there. And we work with special education needs schools to realise that. All that fresh fruits and veg can then go back into canteen and we create a cycle, a loop. And that very much reflects the circular nature of our business.

And lastly, social justice is important for us. We are trying to transition the fashion industry to be a more sustainable place, and it's important that we recognise that we have a duty of care as a good corporate citizen, do the right thing. And that starts with the basics, like we pay at least the real living wage to employees. And we've just recently submitted our B Corp Application and hopefully, this year, we should hear about that. And that very much reflects everything we're trying to do in terms of environment and also in terms of our social agenda.

And that’s me, thank you, I am now going to pass to Janet Menzies from Mage control.

Thanks so much, Anthony. So, hi, everybody. So, I'm delighted to come along today, Scottish Enterprise asked me to share some of the key aspects of our journey. I'm really inspired by some of the stuff that Anthony was saying and lots of inspirational things for us I think to take away from that. So, thank you.

We are not that long established. So, we’re kind of in the shape that we’re in as a team since November 2016, so what have we done? What are our key things, But, what I’ll just do is, Jane did an absolutely fabulous intro into what we did. But just, we basically are an electronics design company, in East Kilbride. We develop very complex, embedded control systems across a range of sectors, and we use core technologies around power electronics, motion control, sensing, and monitoring. And a thing that we actually have in common with Anthony that I didn’t know is we actually are really good at designing stuff that uses ozone to sanitize things like water or hands or whatever, across medical or other and water sanitization companies. So, we currently do that and we actually produce and manufacture ozone generating stuff as well in terms of PCBs.

So, just aspects of our key growth over that period of 2016 to 2022. So, it was all about strategy change. When we started it was five of us and now, we are 19, and the five were; four engineers, and me, and we didn't really know what we need to know in terms of how to begin with a company and lots of things. So, planning for growth, looking at a strategy. Where could we actually target our products and our services, the domestic and international trade world. So, we had to look at things like what do we look like? What’s our PR? What about our web presence? Our marketing. We also went through a significant re-branding 2018. I won’t even show you the old stuff. But the new stuff, just is so much better. We also expanded and moved premises. So, I'll talk about some of that later. But in terms of our growth, the 5 to 19 people, what's really interesting is, when you look at many engineering design companies where the electronic design is the main focus, they are not the same demographic as us. 14 of our 19 people are aged between 20 and 30, that's really unusual. We’ve hired, in fact it's actually more than 7 new graduate posts from Scottish universities I think that’s the people who are currently with us. We have also had three modern apprentices in and around the business support world. And we’ve had post qualifying learning like PRINCE 2 for project management and MBTI in terms of HR processes and the stuff that helps us do that staff development, looking at self and team development, and the development of individuals. That's really, really important to us, in terms of education, development, and planning for that continued occupational and professional growth.

We've also, I couldn't believe this when we looked at the figures, across these, in fact, just over five years, we’ve hosted 23 internships, it’s been a really important thing for Mage. We’ve taken interns from not only Scottish Universities, it's usually a summer internship, but we've also hosted interns from Austria and Germany. And we've had some really, really great experiences working with fabulous young people who have really made us look at ourselves, think about ourselves, you know, look at the challenges of, what does a modern company have to do, have to be, to be attractive to young people? So we've done a lot of work in and around that.

So that's our kind of key areas of growth, and the last period, since we've been here. But can I just say straight away that we couldn't have done this on our own.

Just a quick word on the areas where the organisations and the agencies that appear on this slide. Scottish Enterprise, we are and East Kilbride company, so our council is South Lanarkshire Council. We work very closely developing the young workforce and Skills Development Scotland, all around apprenticeships and how to recruit and how to actually manage to navigate your way through the apprenticeship framework, which is wonderful, but it can be very confusing for a new employer who doesn't know how to get an apprentice. Business Gateway were absolutely crucial to us from 2016 to 2018. In January 2019, we then engaged more directly with Scottish Enterprise, and at that time had an account manager, who is still our advisor. So, we still have that relationship, which is so important to us. Obviously, part of that and connect to it would be Scottish Development International, with whom we've had a long-standing relationship, right from early days. I have a wee note down there, ‘Santander’. This is interesting, because I don't know if people are aware of this, but I like to tell people, Santander do a scheme called ‘Santander Universities’, where they give universities a chunk of money. The money is to be used to spend on helping SMEs, small businesses, to provide internships, so they’ll part-fund and internship for you and the University manages that.

So engaging with university and employer liaison staff that’s the way to do it at the reason I mention it is that it’s been one of the most incredibly good recruitment strategies and facilities that we have had. Because typically what we've done is we would take a Santander-funded internship, so we would pay some of it and Santander would pay the university, that worked really well. And then you’ll see down the side there, you know, the whole readiness for growth and key opportunities for folk, but that's where we started to find, oh there are interns and then tell you what happens with them a wee bit later on. But in terms of these agencies, they have helped us with apprenticeships, they have helped us with consultancy, strategy, planning – are you ready for growth? Are you ready for apprenticeships? Do you know where your sales pipeline is leading?

We didn't know a lot of what we need to know in these early days, around 2017 organisational growth and awareness was so important for us. And I don't know where we would be if these agencies hadn’t actually helped us. And I think another key point is, they know each other, they work together, and they do different things. So, it's about knowing who to go to for that stuff, they’re very good at signposting; “well, we might not be able to help you, but that's organization can”. So, I would say from 2016 to 2019, we engage with all of these agencies have done quite different, but complementary things fitting together, like a really helpful jigsaw, and I couldn’t have done without it.

So I just want to do is just also just focus a bit more on what Scottish Enterprise itself has done.

If I can move my slide. So just to say in 2016 to 18, we worked primarily with Business Gateway Skills Development Scotland, but Business Gateway obviously had that relationship with Scottish Enterprise. So I mentioned the interns and Santander. So, we would get an intern and they would do very well. And then we would talk to Business Gateway, Scottish Enterprise via Business Gateway, to look at the ScotGrad Scheme, and through that we actually had, over the period from 2016 to 19, we had five ScotGrads, so again partially funded, for a small company to actually employ a graduate from one of the, it’s usually the central belt universities that we've actually employed from. So we would get Santander, we would get ScotGrad and then we would hire them. It was wonderful and really helpful. And I don't know, if we would have been able to give them those opportunities, or as many of them to young people who are interns or are undergraduates and graduates, and we still have people that are with us now a few years on that have came through that scheme with us. So, that's been really, really helpful.

And some of the other things, I would like to say a bit about again Business Gateway through Scottish Enterprise. The most important thing I would say, you hear a lot about what these organisations can do the most consistent, most helpful thing through all of it is the ongoing advice, and guidance, and actually encouragement and belief that you can do these things. Because, when you're a small company, you think “oh gosh, can I actually do this?” you can actually. And sometimes that’s about putting you on a course, the courses were perhaps several sessions long. So the Smart Accelerator course that we did, or the Erdev course to look to really look at your business acumen and what do you know? What do you not know? How does your company have to develop? What do you have to do, but let us help you work that out, but what do you have to go and do? That stuff has been absolutely crucial, and it's still happening to us right now. We've still got that really, really good support. We've also had things like the skills, and Skills Development International has been so helpful. In terms of helping us look at international markets. Are we ready? What do we know? Do we need to use the research services? So, the research service would perhaps tell us what kind of market you're looking for and what part of the world you might like to target or the global field staff relationships, perhaps, looking at specific regions and, perhaps, the businesses in that region and helping us find out about what would be worth it, what perhaps, wouldn't be, and as we changed, I think Anthony and Jane mentioned the whole thing about, what did we do come the pandemic? For us, we had to start looking at, well, what can we do domestically in the UK, and what can we do out with? We had to; I always think of it like changing the needle in your compass. So, what are your core technologies? What do you do? How could the world use what you need?

So, these things were really, really helpful and also international trade mission opportunities, and again, during the pandemic, we did that before the pandemic, which were in-person, get on a plane, go somewhere. But actually, since then, some of these have been virtual. So, we're still in development and our marketing manager works in and around all of these agencies and is constantly going to events, going to webinars, finding out about that wider business network both in the UK and abroad. With that I think, how would we have done this? But the support particularly from Scottish Enterprise has been absolutely amazing with that.

One example, I mentioned ozone and so for a while now we’ve been working in the generation of making PCPs which generate ozone mostly for water purification. But with the pandemic we applied for the Innovate UK Grant. It was a small grant, it was actually to develop a hand sanitizer where ozone, I don’t want to say too much because obviously there's IRP in and around all this, but it plays a part with something else that actually helps to sanitize hands without having to use gel. So, this is currently still in production very near the end. But what Scottish Enterprise really helped us was pinpointed and signposted us to a company who could actually help us manufacture the whole thing.

Because we don’t manufacture a whole product, we manufacture the electronics and the software that would go into the product. So, again, really helping us with that access to a wide business network. Because we haven't been in the game that long, we are only five and a bit years, we’re still learning quite a lot about who is out there, who can we work with? And, as Jane said, Mage works collaboratively with people all the time. It's because of what we do. We need other companies that can do the other bits of work with us.

I've got here that a targeted business growth consultancy that started way back in 2016, look at your strategy, look at your pipeline, but one thing that was really significant was SDI organised this session with somebody who helped us look at where are you? Where are you internationally? We thought this won’t be really difficult, but again, this helped us with, no you don't know this, you don’t know that. So, what do you need to develop?

One of the main things I would like to say where Scottish enterprise, in particular, has been really instrumental, with assisting us to move. Now, up until 2019, for 3 years, we had been in an office. We’re an engineering design company designing PCBs, and we have a small lab, where some of this stuff is being manufactured. So, you’ve got soldering irons and all sorts of stuff like that.

We were in an office building in East Kilbride, which housed other people like solicitors and surveyors and stuff. This was really not suiting us at all. So, our dream was to actually get some premises in Scottish Enterprise in the local Technology Park in East Kilbride. And, again, talking to the right people, we are there now. In August of 2019, we realised that dream, and we moved into way better premises that allows us to do that, but it still wasn't quite big enough.

So, Scottish Enterprise, again, helps us to look at developing an extra lab and an extra office, there was some financial help with that. Obviously, the company have to match that as well. So, but that was absolutely crucial to us. So, now we’re happy where we are and we’re looking to continue that development.

In terms of just the whole conglomerate of all these companies, agencies that work with you, I think the main thing that you can, they don't just do one thing, they all do something different. But in terms of survival, the last thing I would like to say is that, like many companies, unfortunately, we had some difficulty, some financial difficulty, and one of the reasons is that, we've never had any other external investment. At the moment, myself, and my husband joined the company completely. But I realised we can’t do this anymore. So, I can’t thank our advisor enough, in terms of helping us work through the options and talk with other people about what would be your options for investment, and for funding to actually grow the business. Because the business is such incredible potential. But we don't have the funds to actually to do that investment. So, where they’re really helping us, in fact, we’re going through one of the options right now, which is looking quite promising I have to say, so that's been really, really good. All because of the pandemic and what do you have to do? Where do you have to actually focus? So, that's still going on for. And I think that, that's probably it.

So, our future plans are to continue to grow the company, more development, more engineers and actually to dramatically increase the manufacturing site of our company. And we hope to be able to do that in the next 2 to 3 years, and I think that's me. Over and out.

Excellent. Thanks so much Janet. I'm just about to open up the Q&A session. Remember, you can submit your questions by popping them into the question box on your control panel. Any questions that we don't get through during the webinar, we will aim to follow-up post event. So, I'm just going to invite the panellists to join me. And I'm just going to open up the question box here.

This is just taking a second. Great. So, one of the first questions, I think it's probably open to everyone here, so “as much as Covid has been a big challenge for businesses, do you feel that you are more resilient as a result of having to adapt?” Anyone go for it.

I'm happy to see him Covid, while a particularly difficult time for the business. You know, our order book dropped off a cliff. However, what we are pretty sure it has done, it has accelerated approach to sustainability from our partners and the brands and retailers that we work with. Also, consumers, I think there's many people realise we can’t always do what we always have done, and are making more environmentally friendly decisions and more raised awareness and there is more of a focus on it. So, in some ways, Covid, and has been great, in terms of the impact. It's had a positive impact in the fashion industry. So, it's probably brought it forward 5 or 6 years in 18 months.

Brilliant thanks, Anthony, Janet do you want to come in?

Ours is probably the more typical story that you hear, in terms of using technology to get the work done when so many people are working from home, we were kind of quite well set up for that. I was always a fan of working from home before this in previous worlds, previous jobs that I have had, I found it very productive, personally. So, we had everything set up was already there, in saying that we actually developed this program works better for this, this program works better for that. We tried everything you go through Web Ex, Teams, Zooms, and then whatever. And I think, I think at the end of the whole process, you now have a structure for how you work remotely and what you can do remotely. As I mentioned earlier, engaging with other organisations on things like this: webinars, or workshop sessions, learning and development sessions. I think it's given a lot of people a lot more confidence to think, you don't have to sit in a room to do this, you can actually find ways to work remotely. So, I think that was the main thing for us.

Brilliant, thanks so much.

Julia, if I can just maybe add my interest in hearing Janet and Anthony’s views on this. Some of the stuff that we've seen with a range of companies that we've worked with over the pandemic is that it is really is either really shone a spotlight on kind of flaws and gaps in businesses, and in particular in things like cash flow and cash flow planning and things like that. Equally it has enabled or forced businesses to really focus on their value. You know, their core market where they're going to actually get the sales from, the income and things like that. And then potentially accelerate change that they might have been planning anyway. So, there's, there's been this whole kind of range of things. But there's, I think, the other thing, as well is there has been a lot of positives, there’s no doubt it has been deeply, deeply challenging for lots of businesses as well and I think a lot of business leaders now are completely exhausted, there’s a fatigue thing as well. So, there's something about how we can all kind of work together, collaborate. I’m delighted to hear Janet talking about broader system to really support businesses throughout the recovery and can springboard into something really positive as a result the past two years.

That's great. Thanks, Jane. So, the second question here, is again to Janet and Anthony, so how have you got staff involved in innovation? Janet on you go.

So, innovation is a funny word at MAGE Control Systems because we think we innovate all the time in terms of engineering, so we actually have to repivot that word and say well, we've been talking about innovation in terms of business practices and stuff, you know, that that kind of focus. I think our staff are so, so well focused in the innovation for engineering that we have to really make effort to say right, let’s go sit down, let’s talk about these things. So sometimes we will have some themed discussions on, we’ll take key people in who may be interested in something that we're trying to develop. So I don't think we do that that well, I'll be honest and I think we could do that much better but I think we know how we should do it. We've also done things like put out, again when everybody was working remotely, put out surveys to say do you think the company is doing this thing well? Do you think the company should change something? What do you think would make the company better? But one last point I’d say is our workforce is predominately full of very vibrant young people who have lots of ideas and, at my age, it’s about having young people that really help you challenge, what might be quite old-fashioned idea, and I have been very challenged by them. And then I say, right, OK, we’ll try that out and they’ve been right. So I think we do have people coming to us with new ideas and who are really energetic and sometimes it can be exhausting, but it’s really worth it.

Brilliant, Tony what about you?

Just a quick point from me. First of all, on what Jane was talking about it would be amiss of me not to say that covid in some ways, it gave us as an exec team, we have a small exec team, it was really quiet at the start of covid but we had more time on our hands to do other things, and we spend time reaching out to different organizations about potential synergies with ACS. And what we're doing now is we're reaping the benefits of that work that was put in during covid, during lockdown and we never had the time to do that and now we were actually starting to see the benefits at the other end. So, just on it and on innovation. We have a variety of different things on site we have a couple of KTPs, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with innovate UK, one’s a management KTP and one’s a technical one about designing a new sanitization chamber. But the management one is all about, it's a growing the rental and resale market, and about how we influence consumers and influence our partners. and as much as it's maybe not the traditional, so we are innovating and making something well, We're having an innovative approach to how the fashion industry operates. But we also, we get, you know, similar to what Janet said, we get great suggestions from our staff. We give them a small reward like a voucher for £25 for M&S, for coming up with good ideas every month. We have regular working parties, we engage with them, from breakfast briefs to employee engagement surveys annually. We actually have a Sustainability Committee where we talk about what we're trying to do, we're trying to realize net zero. How are we going to do it? We going to save more water? How are we going to cut back on our electricity? And most of the ideas that come, come from the shop floor, come from the people who are doing these jobs day in day out.

That's great. Thanks, Anthony. So the next question here is from Paul. Paul is saying, it's great seeing the company's present today. Especially how they've grown, since completing our Advanced Innovation Roadmap Development Program. Has setting yourself clear, strategic, short-term goals and developing a plan of how to get there helped you sustainably grow and become as resilient as you're demonstrating? I’ll open it up to whoever wants to go first.

I think the key point for me, and I've always been a real fan of this, Paul. So, I think that's the thing about strategy and strategy is your overarching vision. I think of in five years I want to be here. And that's a clear picture, keep thinking about it, keep dreaming about it and getting there. But the plan itself, might change from year to year, and I think that's absolutely been our experience. And I remember, I can’t even remember the name of this person, but I read a book, on this great, big American strategist who said the words, the term, strategic planning is an oxymoron because strategy should be the vision and planning is the thing that you do, and you revise, regularly to get there. So I think for us, our strategy, our vision was absolutely clear. And the pandemic we went, right, OK, so, we’ll, perhaps, veer slightly towards that direction. So the strategy did change slightly, but the planning itself was far more likely to change and was reviewed far more often. And sometimes on a weekly basis, so “we make this decision last week, should we do…” because things were changing so so, so quickly. I think that that was the key point for me and I think that that’s an important thing, hang on to the overarching vision but do revise your plans regularly.

Great. Thanks, Janet.

Just quickly from me in terms of our strategy at ACS is to be the best facilitator of circular business models. And certainly in the UK, but beyond, we're looking at international expansion just now. But we're competing with huge 3PL with multi-billion dollar companies. and we can't really do that effectively. So we need to differentiate ourselves. And we're using our USP in terms of we do this in a sustainable way, and we should be the first 3PL, globally, that should be net zero next year. And so these things are important, and why our partners will choose ACS and not one of the big guys

Brilliant. Thanks, guys. And another question for both of you. What is the biggest lesson you've learned in adapting and what would you do differently?

I'm happy to go first. In terms of probably a few years ago, we didn't really know what we didn't know. It's been a huge sort of learning process and we're doing things well now. But it shouldn't stop there, we should continue to benchmark best practice across different organizations and share our knowledge, but listen to others and learn from them, and that’s what will allow us to continue to grow. And, you know, I mentioned earlier, but we have had great support from different consultants from Zero Waste Scotland that have come in and looked at our water, and how we use it. And it’s the support, we've had from them that has allowed us to be more effective in terms of what we do. So learning from others, is our biggest thing that we continue to do to try and support continuous improvement in ECS.

Yes, on you go Janet. That’s great, Tony.

Mines is probably quite personal. I think I'll overthink and I’ve had to challenge myself, on being very, very risk averse. and I think that was unhelpful. As I said, I mentioned I work with my husband we own the company, he's the engineering brain behind everything and he's far better at that than me and I would go “oh well I don’t know, I just don’t think…” and he would really help me through that but I can’t always go to him. So, what I would say to anybody is if you’re, it’s because what risk aversion does is it stops you taking informed risks, and it stops you actually finding opportunities, which can really, really help. So, if you find yourself like that, if you were like me, challenge it. Go and find somebody to brain bounce off, go and find somebody else to talk you through else to talk you through that, don't sit on something, if you’ve got a bit of a hunch and a bit of something, it could be nothing, but talk through it. Don’t sit and be risk averse but don’t take wild risks either. Make sure they’re informed, then get the right people to help you talk. Scottish Enterprise are very good at that, helping you to talk through stuff like that.

That’s great. That was very honest. Thanks, Janet. So, the next one, Tony, is, for you. So, being sustainable is something we to do. What support has ACS had to help them achieve this?

So there's been a variety of different things. I think in terms of trying to be more sustainable, it's not something that's been a big bang for us. It's been something that's been an organic over a long period of time. And it's taken first steps, it can be as simple as removing waste paper bins from employees' desks so that in that bin doesn’t go an apple, a plastic bottle, paper and a yoghurt tub and they all end up in general waste. Get them up, get them active, get into recycling centre and it’s small and simple things like that. And engaging the different support, we have had Home Energy Scotland on site briefing our staff, not just about what the business can do but what they can do at home, how they can save water and energy, personally. We’ve had also staff, you know as much as we pay the living wage, not everyone's got a lot of money. They use electricity meters and they’ve had vouchers and support to help them with their electricity bills. So, there's a variety of things that can be done to help the business but also its employees.

Brilliant. Thanks, that’s great. Janet I've got one here for you, as well. So how did MAGE Control, identify new opportunities in the market.

We, generally speaking, the whole time, we do have somebody who's very, very good who’s our business development market manager, who is responsible for all of our social media for what you see on the website, we send him, in fact, at the moment, he’s not stopped. He’s been at Aberdeen, he was at Edinburgh yesterday, he’s at Edinburgh today. So we’ve got him because things are person to person now so, and he’s been attending all sorts of virtual stuff. So he generates quite a lot of leads generally for us, but he also goes to the right things. The other, the other thing during the pandemic though, we did sit, myself and my husband, did sit and say right what are our core technologies. What’s surrounding? And we looked at looked at lots of calls for innovation, for creation, and looked at grants and we did get one. We got an innovate UK, it wasn't huge one but it helped us to look at this hand sanitizer thing because we knew that we are very, very good at producing the electronics that will produce ozone, we know we're really good at that. There was also the whole green aviation agenda, somewhere where we’ve developed a lot of expertise in that as well in terms of moving away from gas tub bounds to the electrification of stuff like that. So we look at what we have and we look at what the world is calling for. Like Anthony is talking about the whole sustainable thing, and he’s doing that incredibly well. What an example that ACS has set, I am hugely inspired. We’re nowhere near that in the office but my goodness you’ve given us such a lot of thought. But there are big things in the world like how do you look at the fact that planes are polluting the place? The move towards electrifications or hydrogen power. So, we keep an eye on world research and what the world needs to be. So there’s two ways that we do it; there’s the general stuff that our Jordan goes out and does and there’s stuff like how can we actually change the needle of what core technologies can do and where do we actually target that so the pandemic did make us do that quite quickly and quite sharply.

That’s brilliant. Thank You. Anthony, another question for you. So what would your advice be to companies looking to embrace net zero? Where do you think they should start?

First, identifying where all the costs are in the business. Because generally, if you can cut your cost, we've found it’s always has helped us be more sustainable as well: reducing waste, producing energy, reducing the use of water, and they go hand in hand. So focus on that is like, you know, simple things like we have a facility that was filled, halogen lights and they were burning a lot of electricity. And we had some soft loans from Zero Waste Scotland and we’ve had 3 tranches of that now and replaced the entire lights outside, so we have better quality LEDs and we can run many of them for the price of one allergen. Even while we pay back the loans we are still saving £20,000 annually, so these are some of the things that, support you get to do the right thing and be more commercial and be more sustainable and it's a step in the journey towards net zero. There’s many things in there, but part of that, you know, you need to identify all your emissions and measure them to be able to get to a place where you start to take appropriate action to try and reduce them.

That’s excellent. Thanks so much. That was a really good answer. I think the last question we got here is for you Jane. Someone's asking, what support can Scottish Enterprise offer to businesses to develop and grow their business? Jane, I think you’re on mute. Sorry.

Sorry about that. I think Anthony and Janet really summarize that really, really well, you know? So there's some funding, there's access to funding, that comes and goes, but we've got a huge amount of knowledge and connections and expertise across our organization. I think the fundamental thing is to talk to us, so we can plug you in to either other parts of our organization, including SDI or other partners across the, across the delivery system in Scotland. I think that’s the key thing that we offer is that idea that connections, expertise and we've worked with lots of different companies that are facing a lot of the same challenges the companies on this call will be facing, so we can always hook you up with someone that's been there, done it as well. So I think if I was to summarize it really quickly it really would be that, the ability to connect and take opportunities, networks and support.

Excellent, thanks so much Jane. That’s us reaching the end of today's webinar, I just wanted to say a big thanks again to Janet, Anthony and also Jane for presenting today. As I said earlier if there's any questions we’ve not got round to today we will aim to follow up via e-mail post event. That’s us reaching the end of today's webinar, Thanks very much for joining, we should e-mail you a copy of the recording shortly to share with colleagues and your connections. Just keep an eye out for any future webinars in all our usual places on our e-mail channels and on our website. But thanks very much again and I’ll see you all soon in our next webinar. Thank you, bye!