Paul Crossley

Paul Crossley started his long and interesting career in Engineering.  Firstly, at British Aerospace then at an American multinational near Bristol producing highly engineered products using state of the art CNC machinery.

After being asked to take part in a sales and manufacturing presentation in Germany, Paul decided to move onto technical sales and won National Salesman of the Year over three divisions in 1991 – all within his first sales roll.

A few years later Paul moved to Spring Ram Corporation based in Yorkshire as key account manager. Following several successful years at Spring Ram Paul took the role of Sales and Marketing Director at a vitreous flue kit and chimney manufacturing business based in Newbury.  Having spent three years significantly helping to increase turnover he decided to travel overseas for 3 months.

Whilst on a consultancy assignment he met the owner of a shower tray manufacturer in Batley, West Yorkshire and joined the business in 2000 as Sales and Marketing Director. It was a good UK manufacturing business selling directly to bathroom retailers and merchants. The company was the 4th largest shower tray manufacturer in the country. Turnover went up from £3.8m to £7m.  Paul acquired some shares and became Managing Director. A Private Equity house Gresham came in as an investor alongside the RBS as the main banking facility. Paul with his new management team continued to grow the business to £9.8m.

In 2009 the business was listed in the Sunday Times buyout Track top 100 UK Private Equity backed businesses. Increasing profits by 29% in a year.  Paul was also a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year 2009.

After the last big recession in 2009 the business lost 30% of its business overnight and restructured 30% of its workforce. After difficult discussions with RBS, Paul bought 75% of the business, sold 25% to another investment house Maven capital partners and the rest to the management team.  Slowly Paul built the business back up to a £14m turnover with the position of UK and Irish market leader. With exports around Europe and the Middle East.

Also winning several product design and innovation awards for changing shower tray design and the materials used. These have now become industry practices.

In 2016 Paul was awarded an industry Special Achievement Award for his contribution to the bathroom industry.

After achieving further increases in sales to a turnover of approx. £15m, in 2019 Paul decided to sell the business which was bought by a large UK Bathroom Distributor. Since then Paul has been a judge of retail kitchen and bathroom showrooms and has been advising a number of businesses. A passionate champion of UK manufacturing, Paul was one of the founding members of “Made in Britain“ and is one of the KBB Awards judges of Retailer of the Year.

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