I Grew up in Burton on Trent, finished school at 17 with a grammar school education, left and went straight into office type work which always seemed to centre around working with accounting of various forms (this may well have been as my main interest was with mathematics & business studies).

I had a brief spell in the RAF but strangely enough, nothing to do with planes (more to do with driving a desk). After the RAF I had various career changes due to now having become a mother (and working as a temp) again office type work but now more toward the control of finances and the incomings and outgoings of stock & equipment within the firms I worked at as a temp.

We began to re-carve out new careers, Eddie becoming self employed in the electrical engineering trade while I eventually settled into a steady job working with a holiday caravan park company. Like Eddie, I also was brought up with a waste not want not mentality, and that has proved very useful to us. From a very early age, I was taught to shop wisely & to look for the best quality at the best price, this has proved extremely useful in our present business.

Since we bought D B Sport & Scale, our learning curve has been steep. However, with Eddie's technical ability, and my financial ability, we have moved the buisiness forward. My role or (roles) within the business are managing all of the finances, book keeping & accounts, buying stock, and selling the products. We keep in the region of 500 different stock items of materials from the smallest M2 washer up to the largest 9mm plywood sheet. These include all of the items listed on our accessories pages, as well as some that are not as they are mainly to do with the running of the business. Such things are; Wrapping materials, boxes, consumables like saw blades, sanding belts, gloves for GRP work, plan paper, etc. etc.

Some of my time is spent in the workshop preparing sheet & strip-wood for kits which sometimes means bandsaw work to cut it to length. Also I sand & tape hand cut parts that have needed to be cut on the band-saw (there are times when Eddie lets me run the laser machines). Other tasks include packing all of the kit parts in their boxes, printing out plans, printing out & sticking the pictures & description labels on the kit boxes and then putting them on the shelf.

Another area requiring constant attention is the website, this is an area that we both work on as & when needed. Final wrapping & packing of the kits prior to dispatch is also on my list which again requires a little more office work.

Although our business is small, it requires a full time office worker (ME) to keep fully up to date with the work. The tasks mentioned above only scratch the surface of what really needs to be done, but it is all very interesting & absorbing.

Judy.