Ken at Aero Leather
Well-Known Member
The number of staff at Aero has been up and down like a "whore's drawers" over the years
Peak would be around 50 in the early 1990s at the height of the Japanese market, today it's around 25
After the fraud and failed "coup" in 2012 we cleared out all the dead wood and conspirators and started afresh building a new team around Julie and Paula. Within a few weeks several valued ex Aero staff returned, the ones that had left when we "retired", and we hired a whole bunch of Heriot Watt graduates. What we weren't aware at the time was that only one in ten HW graduates could expect a "proper job" in The UK in the trade they'd spent 4 years studying. Most had been working in places like McDonalds, Asda, Pubs etc Shocking but that's how it is, nobody wants to manufacture outside the 3rd or even 4th World these days
The combination of Julie's drive and the young kids enthusiasm transformed Aero. most of these are still at Aero (around a dozen) and producing garments of the very highest level
What has changed most is the volume of office staff needed these days to deal with "modern life" internet, high volome of mails per order, bureaucracy etc etc.
In the mid 1980s we had a 5 to 1 ratio of product workers to office staff, today it's closer to 2 to 1
That's the biggest change
Peak would be around 50 in the early 1990s at the height of the Japanese market, today it's around 25
After the fraud and failed "coup" in 2012 we cleared out all the dead wood and conspirators and started afresh building a new team around Julie and Paula. Within a few weeks several valued ex Aero staff returned, the ones that had left when we "retired", and we hired a whole bunch of Heriot Watt graduates. What we weren't aware at the time was that only one in ten HW graduates could expect a "proper job" in The UK in the trade they'd spent 4 years studying. Most had been working in places like McDonalds, Asda, Pubs etc Shocking but that's how it is, nobody wants to manufacture outside the 3rd or even 4th World these days
The combination of Julie's drive and the young kids enthusiasm transformed Aero. most of these are still at Aero (around a dozen) and producing garments of the very highest level
What has changed most is the volume of office staff needed these days to deal with "modern life" internet, high volome of mails per order, bureaucracy etc etc.
In the mid 1980s we had a 5 to 1 ratio of product workers to office staff, today it's closer to 2 to 1
That's the biggest change
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