During W.Howard's recent board restructure, Phil Tissington assumed the role of Managing Director for W.Howard, while also retaining his responsibility for the group’s UK operations strategy. We caught up with Phil to find out what these changes mean for the company, its products and customers.

Q. What is the most immediate change for you now that you’ve become Managing Director?
A. Having been promoted to Managing Director, I now not only enjoy the responsibilities I held as Operations Director. I am working closely with the commercial teams to drive strategy and customer focus to continue to make W.Howard a successful continually growing business. I want W.Howard to continue to be the employer of choice and to be a great company to work for.

Q. Are you looking forward to getting more involved in the commercial side of the business?
A. It’s obviously going to be a learning curve for me, but I’m looking forward to being more visible and meeting our customers. I’ll be working closely with our internal and external sales teams, and the marketing team, to better understand the commercial details of our business and the opportunities that lie ahead.

Q. W. Howard has seen a lot of change with the recent board restructure. How does that trickle down into benefits for customers?
A. All the W.Howard team pride themselves on great customer service and this is something we want to continue to improve on. I am confident that with more involvement in the commercial side of the business, gaining feedback from the team and from customers’ directly, I can identify improvements throughout the business, commercially and operationally that improves our service to our customers.

Q. What are you most looking forward to in terms of your new role?
A. I'm most looking forward to coming out of my comfort zone. Operations is something I know through and through, and I’m looking forward to developing my knowledge of the commercial side of the business.

Q. You’re obviously still going to be heavily involved in the W.Howard factory, so what are your plans to develop that part of the business?
A. It is important we invest in all areas of the business and the factory is one of these critical areas. We have a very knowledgeable and skilled team running the plant and my role is to support them on their ideas and plans to drive efficiency improvement which will deliver continued growth and secure the future of the business.

Q. Tell me a bit about yourself outside of W Howard? What hobbies do you have?
A. I'm really big on fitness, mainly Peloton. The peloton bike was purchased during COVID and is something I use most days.
Then there’s football - Manchester City is a big love of mine, which is good and bad because there’s a real mixture of football fans in the company. I have three children, all of whom are big Man City fans, especially my younger daughter now that Grealish has joined, so as a family we all try and go to as many games as possible.