About me
My background
I started my career in distribution at John Lewis in a delivery hub in Exeter. I learnt a lot about processes and developing new systems of working. I was elected as partner voice representative for warehouse and admin, sat on the SRMC (safety and risk management committee) and, was part of the continuous development team.
Whilst in post I was given the project to create a system for managing the site consumables. This included everything from sack trucks, to pens and everything in between. I started by checking what we had, what we needed and what needed replacing. I used the current suppliers to get the essentials in and cover the basics. I created a list of everything in each area and each section. I found better suppliers, upgraded everything and negotiated one off extra discounts from the suppliers in order to reduce the cost of upgrades.
I implemented a monthly stock check and quickly had it down to less than an hour to complete. The system i created saved each stock check, for a couple of months it gave a reorder list to maintain all levels, as the data grew it built a picture of usage and created minimum and maximum levels, and it worked flawlessly for 2 years. After that I looked at the data and saw seasonal patterns and incorporated that into the system. Following that success it had all sorts of things added to it including uniforms, first aid kits and their parts, which included annual checks for the best before dates.
My career moved along with further projects, rolling them out across the network, and kept my role as partner voice representative supporting my colleagues and making sure that what they said was taken seriously and changes were made as necessary.
Eventually I outgrew what was available to me and I moved on to Lidl who were opening a new warehouse in the area. I went around the country to their other sites being trained in all their processes and then, when the new warehouse was ready, I started training new people as they came in. It was a great experience and gave me a fascinating insight into streamlining processes, and how simple, small efficiencies, at many points can be more effective than a sweeping change to one thing. I was also afforded the opportunity to work on the shop refit team. We worked overnight and the shop was open during the day, in one week (Monday night to Friday morning) the shop would be completely refitted, absolutely everything was changed to new, down to the last shelf and label.
After the few months on secondment, I went back to the warehouse, promoted to charge hand (supervisor to you and me), in the goods in, ambient department. I worked the pm shift responsible for putting away the 1200 – 1800 pallets that are delivered on a daily basis. It was fun, and I learnt a lot about leading a team but an opportunity came up at the John Lewis store with better hours and the chance to expand my knowledge.
I felt that having worked in two man deliveries, shop fitting and large scale distribution, that I wanted to round off that at the shop so that I had experience from goods coming, to being sold and delivered to the customer. as part of the operations team my role was really varied. I was able to work in almost every section of the store, and was able to take part in many courses and workshops, such as change management.
In the January of 2020 my wife and I decided to move to Glastonbury. It was an impulsive decision that we have never looked back on. I managed to find a wonderful small business to work for, I had an interview with the founder and the operations manager, who at the end of the interview, told me that I would hear back after the weekend, which I did. I was offered the job which was supposed to be a general position moving between despatching orders and their manufacturing building. After my first week, they decided it would be a better use of my knowledge to make me a team leader, this quickly morphed into a warehouse supervisor position, which meant I had full autonomy to rearrange the warehouse and create the operating procedures.
A few months after my probationary period was over, the company wanted to move the production facility to a larger building. I was luck enough to be a part of this project, and was given the responsibility of finding a solution for moving bulk material around the building, finished products to the despatch building, and ensuring sufficient pest control services were commissioned. I managed to save thousands working with the likes of Jungheinrich, to find the best solution. Happily i managed to bring this part of the project in around £5000 under budget.
Once in the new building I was promoted to assistant production supervisor, in charge of running the production building on a day to day basis including the production schedule, and made first on call keyholder. This gave me the opportunity and scope to be able to change and overhaul all of the processes in the building. I started with the most obvious inefficiencies, this made enough of a difference that I could pull other members of staff from basic production to help with other projects. I was lucky to find that one of the members of staff had a university level education in programing and other technical areas. With his help we managed to create tools that saved on average 9 hours a week, which adds up significantly over the course of a year. We also became good friends and still are to this day, he also helps me on projects occasionally bringing his immense wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm for creating efficient, streamlined and user friendly solutions.
This lead to my final project, recreating the entire stock management system, utilising his computer skills and my experience of doing the job and knowing what functionality it needed to make the job simple, and the system robust. Tying this in with creating a system to track individual performance of staff and create a database giving an accurate view of the reality of production timings. With this information the company directors and I were able to use this information to deploy staff to the areas they were strongest, providing training in the areas that they needed, and the ability to get some of them mentoring others. We also were able to identify the sweet spot for production quantity to get the most efficiency from the production room. Lastly this data gave us the information on how long it takes to produce all the items in all the various sizes meaning we could incorporate it accurately into pricing, changing from a targeted time blanketed into categories model, to a finely tuned sku by sku data driven model, identifying those individual products that for various reasons took longer to pack.
Whilst doing this job i decided to start making candles in 2022. This lead me to creating my own website, mindyabeeswax.com, using everything i had learned to create my own way of working. By summer that year I had begun trading at local craft fairs and markets which lead me to create The Tor Collective. Over the next couple of years it slowly grew, building a community of independent traders and crafters.
In 2024, my wife became ill, having so much on my plate became a bit too much to juggle, I went to the directors and had a very honest conversation. Given the direction of my businesses and the growth I had achieved, the founder of the company, having been in my shoes in the past, said as much as they wanted to keep me, that my job would only reduce the time and growth opportunity, and given my wife’s health I needed the flexibility that they just couldn’t afford to give me.
Mid way through 2024, my own health issues became more of an issue. With my wife on the road to recovery, I talked to the person who had just taken over running the Tuesday markets, we discussed the tor collective events business and my vision for it. She was delighted to get involved and in January of 2025 became a director.
By this point I had just taken on a shop in the town, this gave me a permanent base to work from. I had also helped many stall holders to find better suppliers, build their websites, and grow their businesses. I had even started to teach people how to do it which is where The Centaur Mentor began. With encouragement from those I had helped i started to offer my services.
This brings us up to the current day. My wife is back to herself and my health issues are now back under control. The future is bright, and I have forged friendships and connections that will last a lifetime.