Year in Review: Steve Gelder – A year of expanding and building vision

This story is over

2017 has been an interesting year. BREXIT quite rightly continues to dominate the national headlines whilst back in the real world, like many businesses, we’ve just been getting on with it.

Back in the summer of 2014 we launched our 20 by 17 Vision – 20 things we listed to achieve come the end of 2017. We landed this and picked up the title of Lincolnshire’s Fastest Expanding Company’ in the process – something we are very proud of.

Highlights included opening a new office in Sheffield, increasing our apprentice numbers to 21 and our numbers employed by 288, and on a personal note, my Chairmanship of ‘Invest Gainsborough’ has helped to lift its profile, attract investment and even led to RBS’s CEO Alison Rose paying us a visit.

My eldest lad ‘Sam’ graduated from Warwick University with a First and commenced employment in the banking sector whilst my youngest lad completed his A Levels and started university life, studying ‘Real Estate’ at Sheffield University.

All good business is done between people who like trust and respect one another.

Throughout the year we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on client relationships, making new ones and strengthening existing ones. This in turn, coupled with the ‘can do’ attitude we are known for has not only delivered us record sales but we enter 2018 with another very strong order book. On all levels for me, the Gelder Group business and my family, 2017 has been a good year.

Looking forward, the summer of 2018 will see Gelder Group complete 30 years in business – how we will celebrate this milestone remains to be seen. Throughout the first quarter all focus will be on finalising, publishing and launching our next three-year vision. The first drafts are complete, four teams from across the business will finalise these in January, with marketing literature produced in February with a role out in March.

Our 2014 20 by 17 Vision proves to be such a success for us which in turn has given our 20:20 Vision much more buy in from our teams and having seen first drafts, I confess to getting a tingle up my spine just thinking about the March 2018 launch, part excitement and part trepidation!

I am extremely lucky to have such a great team at Gelder Group and don’t feel that I’ve ever been looking forward to a New Year as much as I am looking forward to 2018.