In the past few years, we've seen independent aga engineers retire or choose alternative business ventures, agents closing shop and the biggest refurbisher in the market going into liquidation.

Some of these are personal choices, some of them down to bad management and others just bad luck. From our years of experience, the problem with the market is (mainly) the fluctuations. There's no consistent standard for the number of sales each month - that's why you usually see winter, easter, summer sales etc, to boost turnover.

Luckily, we learned from this very quickly and have processes in place to mitigate those inevitable market dips. Since we started as an official limited company in 2019, we've seen our sales double every single year. It was fantastic from a business growth perspective, but a huge strain on resources and our team morale.

We've always worked with Business and Financial Advisors to give us some good footings, management and the invaluable experience they bring to the table. I'd happily talk about business, strategy, branding and marketing for hours, and the (slight) obsession has proved helpful with Saltire over the past 6 years. Although, we'd been focused on growth for too long.

After a particularly stressful year (our busiest year on record!), we decided to scale back the business, and reduced our operating expenses by over 60%. It sounds counterintuitive, but the stress on the team, time away from their families and op-ex costs were just too much to be sustainable, so we had to scale back slightly.

It's the best decision we've ever made.

We're in a very structured and stable place, team morale is back, our focus is incredible and we've even partnered with Esse and Everhot to offer their cookers alongside our refurbished models (years of work in the making!).

Blake and Bull were the biggest aga refurbishment company in the UK, and industry friends of ours. They had built a fantastic business and had a loyal following of customers who had experienced their services and company culture first hand. After they announced their closure, I spoke to their founder Matthew. Our conversation was a bittersweet one, but it made me realise that I'd absolutely done the right thing scaling back to make us more resilient. A company can quickly grow arms and legs with an enthusiastic entrepreneur at the helm, but it's not always the best way to operate 24/7. Mental burnout is real, and a small family business can be damaged by too much growth too quickly. We'd rather the team have a great work/life balance and a focus on quality over quantity. That's why we'd never be in a race to be the cheapest or throw cookers out for turnover's sake - we put too much time, attention and craft into what we do.

Managing teams of engineers, offices of sales staff, fleets of vans on the road and huge premises isn't for us. The risk/reward doesn't fit with our company vision and we love that our small family business is just that - a bunch of engineers who love what they do.

We've built Saltire from the ground up, with a customer-focused approach. We give you all the information and unbiased advice you need, to make an informed decision on the perfect range cooker for you, and we're here to stay.

A rare 'behind the scenes' post from me today, but I like to share what's going on with Saltire and the market in general. It's always good to stay informed!

- Steven