The team completed 54 projects in what has been our busiest year so far. So much of this work has been from word-of-mouth recommendation that we feel doubly proud. Before I pick out a few highlights, a little about the business:
Those of you who already know us will probably have met "Little Jon". Jon Savage was with us from the very start but had to retire from the team early in the year due to ill health. He'll be sorely missed, not least for his endless supply of crude password suggestions. He's doing well by the way.
Huge thanks are due to the helpers who stepped in to keep the projects moving - Laurence, Sam and my 3 sons, Max, Jonas and Luca, who came to my rescue through Spring and Summer.
Sam, an Engineering undergraduate, spent the summer with us with a specific mission - to redesign the factory layout and fill a giant skip with all the clutter we really didn't have space for. His work made a huge difference to the workflow and efficiency in the workshop. Much less time is now spent looking for the 10mm socket.
Luca really took to the electrical side of things and took ownership of a new sub-assembly area, making sure this side of things is also neat and tidy. He also took the lead in getting our new CNC/CAD machine commissioned and will be looking after this new facility going forward.
We invested in the CNC equipment this year in order to be able to meet the widely varied demands of our customers. While we have a very close relationship with our excellent furniture supplier, for custom or smaller jobs, it's going to be much better for us to take these on.
We designed and manufactured a complete furniture set for a wee Caddy this year and look forward to more of this in 2024
Using black hexaboard and some lovely tiger bamboo, we worked with the customer to fit out this little escape capsule. We were really happy with the finished results.
Pamela had the soft furnishings made which really finish off this luxurious space for her and furry companions.
The very friendly Caddy camper community received this well which led to a follow up project that will require us to go even further with clever and bespoke design in the new year.
Our bread and butter remains the Transporter. We converted several of these in '23, some in full, some in stages. It's perhaps not surprising that customers wish to approach conversion in phases given the financial lansdcape but core to the VanHux offer, is to meet these kinds of needs. Here are some highlights:
The Secret Crafter
At VanHux, we get lots of equiries to take on much larger projects. These are almost always highly bespoke and require hundreds of hours to complete. We eventually agreed to take one on as a learning exercise. While we, and the customer, were delighted with the end result, large format vans remain a potential future addition to our offer as they will require extra investment to be sustainable, and for these reasons, until now we have kep it under wraps!
We are looking forward to another busy year and would like to thank all of our past and present customers for continued support, we don't take anything for granted. The last words are reserved for Jack who joined the team recently. He has proven to be an invaluable team member, producing an amazing quality of work and providing biscuits on a regular basis. I'm very lucky...
Jon xx
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