Seasons Greetings from Alex Sewell
So that was 2013 then! I know they say that time goes by faster as you get older but at this rate I will 80 in what seems like 5 years!!! A brilliant year for the business, we won some fantastic awards voted by our industry peers and most importantly by the customers, we will record our best ever turnover and the market is full of confidence for the years ahead.
Rather than reflect on the year I prefer to look ahead to 2014 which will be a big year for me both workwise and personally.
On a work front we will open our new head office in February in Rickmansworth which we are really excited about, finally an office and a meeting room!!! Costa Coffee profits will take a tumble! We will be opening our new Watford office at Easter headed up by one of my most trusted Lieutenant Joe Rylett and we have some exciting news to come with regard to our Chorleywood office in due course as well. On top of that Emily Walton continues to grow our New Homes department and we have some big projects coming on line in 2014 as well. In Lettings Ben Smith will start to shape his team in the new office following his promotion to Lettings Manager and Reagan Bradley has so much opportunity for growth in our Property Management team we don’t know where to start first! Thank goodness for my new PA Sammy Walton who has saved me over the last few months.
Baby due end of February
However, one of the main reasons we are in this strong position for growth is because of the work of Kirsty Drabik during this last 8 years. Kirsty has been instrumental in the growth of the sales department, has always acted as my confidante and questioned my decisions when necessary and is a bloody good estate agent who carries the ethos of the company with her at all times. The good news for Kirsty and Martyn is that Kirsty goes on maternity leave in the new year, but I will miss her while she is at home with the baby. Good luck.
On a personal front we have a big year coming up, like hundreds of other parents we await the email in late March telling us what school our son has got in to, fingers crossed! We also have building work starting in January and on top of all this I turn 40, so I have set myself 3 targets for next year to be achieved by August 26th 2014, I’ll let you know then if i get there!
Finally, I would like to say thanks to all our customers past and present, we are a service company and do not have a business without you. We always remember who pays our wages and will continue to do so next year.
And a prosperous New Year from Jane Gardner
Well what a year 2013 has been, I barely know where to begin!
So this has been the year of opportunity for Sewell & Gardner, anticipating the return of the sales market it was time to build our team and get everyone trained and ready for the phones to start ringing. And ring they have!
It has been a busy year with many records broken by our tremendous staff, Jackie Scott taking the sales record from Kirsty Drabik, who has held it for 6 Years. 3 of my Lettings team nominated for individual Sunday Times awards and Rochelle Latham walking away with UK Lettings Negotiator of the Year and Reagan Bradley, UK Property Manager of the Year! Here you can watch the video which was filmed by the awards team to commemorate Reagan’s win and was shown at Property Management Live to hundreds of other UK managing agents, a great honour. So talking of awards, this year our team have won no less than 12 National Industry Awards, surely an unrivalled achievement, especially as 10 were golds!
We are very much looking forward to 2014, we have new departments including my own new Operations Team running our marketing, systems, community work and team processes, we are heading into our new head office in January where we will have our very own Lettings shop front, a long time coming!
The inside of our new Watford office, coming in 2014
We are now the proud owners of a new office in Watford town centre which will be opening in the Spring, we have an even bigger and more impressive property management department offering outsourced services to our fellow agents and we have new systems and processes in place ready to take on as much new business as possible.
That said, we honour and rely on the continued support of our fabulous customers so the new year will see a number of incentives designed to say a huge thank you for choosing Sewell & Gardner and helping us to achieve the success we’ve had this year.
I, on a personal note, like Alex (and another 5 members of staff), have a milestone birthday in 2014, 21 again of course, so I think that the entire company will be having a year long celebration! Alex and I have been working together now for almost 12 years and I could not have asked for a better business partner, the ying to my yang, so I wish to finish by saying ‘thank you’ and here’s to the next Sewell & Gardner adventure.
A Happy & Prosperous New Year to you all.
