Two fellow directors and I founded Martek Marine back in the heady days of 2000 when the spectre of economic downturn was little more than a bad memory of the early 1990s. With a background in the shipping industry but no experience of running a business, we stepped fearlessly – naively, some might say – into the breach with a budget of £6,000 and set about building a successful company. We were convinced we could create a business that would flourish, be a fantastic employer to work for, and (the icing on the cake) one that would do some good in the world too.
If all that sounds just a little bit too idealistic, the company’s milestones are a testament to our success. We’ve won two Queen’s Awards for Enterprise, as well as being recognised by the Sunday Times Fast Track. Our emissions monitoring system, which checks levels of pollutants created by ship engines, has cornered us a 95 per cent share of the world market. And all that’s been done from land-locked Rotherham, where there’s not so much as a seagull in sight.
We’d enjoyed year-on-year growth since we set out on our intrepid journey to create the world’s best environmental monitoring and safety company, so it came as something of a shock when we hit the economic doldrums. When things get that tough, I soon learned, you need some inner strengths and resources to draw on. A bottomless well of self-belief helps, for a start.
But the soul searching that we had to do as directors about where Martek’s strengths and deficiencies were had a positive effect in the end, making us more efficient and more productive than ever. Our commitment to teamwork, ownership, improvement and enjoyment are central to Martek’s identity, but could these qualities really give us what we needed to succeed when the chips were down?
Well, as it turned out, we didn’t have to sacrifice any of those ideals, and we didn’t have to change Martek into the kind of company that none of us would have wanted to work for either. Nevertheless, there have been changes, and some of the most important have been changes to the way we think as directors that has seen us take on a savvier approach to decision making that helped us emerge from the recession leaner and meaner, a better business than we were three years ago.
I’ve taken on a managing director, whose complementary skills have helped make a huge contribution to our success, and Martek’s blazing the innovation trail once again with new life-saving and environmental protection products that are going to corner the market, save the planet and save lives.
Most importantly for my company, I’m immensely proud that Martek Marine has come out the other side leaner and meaner. We didn’t lose money and we kept hold of our most valuable asset of all: our people.
