Gregory Martin has been director at dealership Champion Forklifts in Dorset for over 12 years, but his life with forklifts extends back to childhood. He talks about his time in the industry, running a family-owned business and moving forward in a challenging market.

My father, Derek Martin, has been involved in the materials handling industry since 1972. Born in Basingstoke, he underwent early employment at nearby Montgomerie Reid in Bramley, firstly in the sales office and subsequently as an area salesman for Lansing Bagnall. 

He started Champion in January 1995 and I have so many memories of the business in the early days. In particular, I remember him having very long days, which including us having to drive back from France through the night so he could attend a meeting at 8 am the next morning. 

There was huge excitement around the initial set-up and every milestone reached was an amazing success for our family. Seeing this first hand, an extremely high level of customer service was instilled from a very young age. 

I first started doing some very basic part-time administration in my teenage years, but on school holidays I would spend the day with my father, going out on the road to visit customers. During this time, my brother and I would tag along to visit long-term customers, some of whom are still customers today. 

The forklifts always fascinated me and at the time looked like enormous, intimidating pieces of kit! But I have grown to become very fond and proud of our industry over time.

Being a family business is at the core of our values and is crucial to how we treat our customers. Our team is extremely experienced and loyal. Many of them have been with us for a very long time. As employers, we treat everyone with respect and as if they are part of our family. 

From a customer perspective, one of the reasons many choose to deal with us is due to the family business connection. A lot of our customers themselves run family businesses, so we have a lot in common. It is easily demonstrated that for us, our company is more than a nine-to-five job and we pride ourselves greatly on this. We business owners are often going through similar challenges, so it is good to share and get experience from people in other industries.

A value that has remained constant from our beginning in 1995 is that we always put ourselves in the customer’s position and see things from their side of the table. This often helps with understanding their main priorities and helps to create a structure when working on a project with them. 

Being independent, we can truly supply the customer with what they need rather than what we are trying to sell. I think this has served us well over our 28-year history and we will look to carry this on into the future. Through this independence, we have maintained customers that Derek has dealt with since 1979.

In my time as a director, over the past 12 years, the biggest challenges have been purely the effect the financial markets have had on our customers and suppliers. 

Having started in 2010, there were still huge wounds in the market from the 2008 recession. 

Unfortunately, we have seen many suppliers and customers not make it through the recent years. Combining this with the recent COVID years, I must admit that I have never known any other market than the lean and competitive one we find ourselves in today. 

However, in spite of recent challenges, we recently experienced one of our biggest achievements. We hit our highest-ever turnover back-to-back for the last four years and we hit the highest number of units supplied last year.  

This year, we also won a contract with a new customer to look after all of their branches and materials handling equipment, which resulted in a very large order of new equipment which has now been delivered and is performing fantastically well. For me, huge job satisfaction comes from things like this.

When reflecting on how the industry has changed since our beginnings, I believe speed and communication are a huge focus for companies now compared to the mid-90s. 

We have invested heavily in ensuring that our technologies are time-saving and as efficient as possible. As consumers, we do expect a lot more in a lot shorter time frame which is possibly the ‘Amazon effect’ but we have to accommodate and adapt. 

Going into our fourth decade, it still feels like an exciting industry to be in with the constant discussion and ideas around future replacement fuels and other technologies coming into the marketplace.

Do you work in or around forklifts? The Forklift Diaries would love to hear your story!