Could you tell us a little about the history of Axminster Tools and Machinery Ltd and the driving force behind its success as one of the major suppliers in the country?

Axminster Tools is a family run organisation that’s been in operation for nearly fifty years. Since its original inception in a small store in Axminster, Devon, it’s grown to eight nationwide stores and a multinational mail order business. Alongside that we do a huge amount of work supporting businesses and the education sector with specialist teams in place to work with those areas. Finally, we run a wholesale distribution arm working with partners both in the UK and abroad. We’ve always been an organisation that has chosen to do things our own way and we retain that today with almost all functions remaining in-house at our Axminster Head Office. It’s here that we design and manufacture new products, produce completely unique copy and content for marketing our product range and house our contact and distribution centres.

Our driving force has always come from the strong work ethic and passion of our teams here at Axminster. In the last few years, we’ve seen a number of key changes in our leadership team due to retirement of those instrumental in building the business. Since then we’ve been working hard to really assess who we are, what we do and how we can deliver our message and product to our customers. By doing this we can build upon the success of the company to date and hopefully take it to the next level both in the UK and internationally.

As a family run business and market leader you put a high focus on your marketplace, your workplace, supporting your community, buying British and supporting the environment. To what do you owe your sustained success and growth in such a competitive marketplace?

I would say our success comes from a number of factors; the fact that we’re a family business has helped us to instill values and an ethos of really caring about our customers. We spend a huge amount of time ensuring we recruit and train our staff at a high level in order to ensure we’re able to offer our customers expert assistance over the phone and in person whether that’s on product selection, on how to do certain tasks or with after sales support. Our manufacturing and procurement arms have allowed us to bring products to market that are unique to us and help cement our position as a company that truly understands the woodworking community’s needs. Our marketing teams spend hours ensuring that every product is supported with high quality imagery and informative descriptions. It’s a real joint effort from many different aspects of the business and our employees’ hard work and loyalty helps us to continue to drive things forward, particularly during times of change.

We know where we want to be positioned in the market; we don’t want to be the ones driving down prices to a point where it’s unsustainable for anyone. Through working to understand our customers on an ongoing basis, we’re able to offer the products that they need at reasonably competitive prices, supported by the service that they deserve; whether that’s someone just starting out at home or an industrial-level workshop. One of our greatest challenges is looking to the future and ensuring that the woodworking community continues to attract new entrants. Many of our current customers learnt their skills either as a child or in education and with less of this happening today, we believe it’s part of our role to step in either by supporting educational centres that are teaching these skills or providing our own videos, guides and knowledge sharing.

If I had to choose one single element that has really helped to drive and sustain our position in a competitive marketplace, I would say it’s our passion. We share our customer’s passion for a job well done. We’re passionate about them having the right tools to create their best work and we’re passionate about ensuring we treat them exactly as we would like to be treated; with dependable service that exceeds their expectations wherever possible.

Axminster Tools & Machinery Ltd is a well-known and leading brand in your sector. Good design is often copied. When you have come across infringements, how have you dealt with them?

Given the length of time that we’ve been trading, we’ve been relatively fortunate to have experienced very few incidents of infringement. One of our biggest ones was many years ago when we were relatively new to manufacturing. A wood turning chuck system that we both designed and manufactured in house was copied by the Chinese market. With no real proof of the infringement or knowledge to support the claims, our response really hinged around ensuring that we improved our own product making ours a superior version. Our own chucks have evolved multiple times since then, thanks to our knowledge of the consumer needs and our ability to design, manufacture and test in house.  Other infringements have primarily included image or copy theft which we’ve never fully protected in the past. The fact that we work with a network of dealers meant many of them used our copy and images, even our part numbers, in order to sell our products, which is something that is a bit of a grey area. In general, we’ve been fortunate that a quick email or letter highlighting the issue where appropriate has resulted in the content being removed. As we move into a new phase of our business, we’re even more aware of our need to create great content and then protect it, hence our work with ACID.

What is your message about the copying culture that pervades some of your sector and those who ride rough shod over the law?

The woodworking industry is a fairly small one and whilst there is some copying culture, primarily in manufacture, this has tended to fall away in recent years with changes in manufacturing in Asia. Many machines and products still come out of the same factories around the world and will be re-badged making them appear as copies. It’s our role to try and add a variation or improvement wherever possible to ensure that our items are unique, and we try to focus on ensuring we’re compliant rather than auditing others. Within any industry there are those that feel a need to copy others and this can be both flattering and frustrating. Whilst I understand that in some instances this can be a genuine oversight, for those that do it purposefully I’d have to ask why? If you don’t have the knowledge or ability to push your own business forward without breaking the law, it will eventually catch up with you, whether that’s with legal issues or a lack of trust from your customers.

You have been ACID members for a couple of years now and clearly IP ethics, compliance and respect for intellectual property are the cornerstones by which you operate. What do you think could be done to promote this more generally in the UK?

All of these areas are hugely important to both businesses and individuals. With a huge upturn in social media and the continued rise of the internet, we truly are in a content culture. As such almost all individuals will be impacted by IP rights at some point, whether that’s in their work life or at home. It’s my belief that because of this we should be doing more to educate people on basic IP legislation in order to ensure that they don’t haphazardly walk into a situation where they’ve infringed someone’s rights or have their own IP infringed upon. I’d love to see more done in formal education to help provide individuals with basic business sense including these areas as it’s such an important aspect of life once you leave the education system.

The ACID team visited your amazing factory premises and carried out an Intellectual Property Strategy Review and gave various recommendations. Clearly the intellectual capital within your workforce is part of your strength – its skilled people, your know-how, market intelligence. At what stage are you at in implementing the recommendations?

I would say we’ve started implementation but we’re yet to truly take the recommendations on board as much as we would have liked. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve been through a period of change of leadership team and two of the individuals heading up the ACID project have since left the company. This, combined with an overhaul of our entire company vision, purpose and focus has meant that we’ve not given it the time that it truly deserves. That said, we’ve recently taken the decision to appoint internal champions who will be able to drive the day to day aspects of implementing and maintaining the recommended actions. So far we’re working with ACID primarily on the protection of our product designs but our next phase will be more centred around our general content protection as well – something that we’ve been meaning to do for a while.

Is enough done by government to promote IP respect within corporate social responsibility?

If it is, I wouldn’t say that I’m aware of it. For that very reason, I’d have to say in my opinion, no there isn’t enough done to promote it.

ACID is campaigning for stronger enforcement for design infringement. Since the 2014 IP Act introducing criminal provisions for intentional registered design infringement but also for individual directors, do you believe that if this is extended to unregistered designs infringement, it will become more of a deterrent, and would you support this?

I think it would potentially become more of a deterrent but that it would be harder to police. There would also need to be far greater awareness from individuals as to what design infringement constitutes and what the provisions are for dealing with it. Whilst I think it may help, people still break the law with regard to registered designs, so implementing this further for unregistered designs may still continue to be ignored by those who choose too. In terms of supporting it, I genuinely believe that in order for anything to be effective, we need to ensure that all business owners and individuals are fully aware of what intellectual property is and the rules, regulations and rights around it. If individuals are educated well then anyone then knowingly breaking those regulations should clearly face penalties for doing so.

Can you give us a steer on what you feel ACID’s achievements have been and what we could do in the future to raise further awareness about IP theft?

For us the biggest achievements are helping businesses to understand what measures they can put in place to protect some of their biggest assets – their intellectual property. IP is a huge legal area and we would be lost as to what best to action and how to move things forward without ACID’s support and recommendations. Helping creators and designers such as ourselves by bringing a wealth of IP knowledge and experience has to be truly commended. How do we raise more awareness of IP theft? By growing the network of businesses that ACID support, by ensuring that any infringements are identified and dealt with professionally and in line with current legislation and by continuing to advocate for greater education and awareness of intellectual property law.

Axminster Tools & Machinery