Magazine Article - Dinamic Ceramics

Magazine Article

Associated Sectors: Information & Business Systems | Materials & Physics | Business support | Ceramics

Dinamic Ceramics - 01/11/06

Abstract:

Globalisation and the electronic revolution owe much of their growth to one important component - the English language.

Article text:

Globalisation and the electronic revolution owe much of their growth to one important component - the English language.

Seeded around the world by pirates, traders and imperialist conquerors the language itself has become Britain’s greatest export and today stands central to a multi billion pound industry in foreign language training.

One man to recognise its value before the 90s EFL boom was Gary Dawson, a career marketeer and entrepreneur who saw opportunities a plenty in the former Soviet Union.

Setting up his own language school, Gary lived in Moscow through the volatile 90s and experiened the boom and bust of post communist Russia.

Leaving school at 18, a brief encounter with the world of accounts gave him a grounding in business finance before he returned to education to complete a teaching degree in Geography:

“One thing my first job taught me was numbers. Getting my head around tax and VAT early on I think was important to what followed.

“At university I also took on the role of running the student bar which gave me a liitle more experinece of the world of bisness and ever since then I have felt confident about manging companies.”

Disillusioned by the lack of teaching jobs available after graduation, Gary joined Britvic as a salesman and after working his way up to sales manager was asked to manage the integration of two orange juice brands following the buy out of Britvic by Bass Brewers in 1985.

His experience in brand mangement continued as a brand manager in the wine and spirits sector:

“I began to get my head around what brand marketing is all about and did a lot of work on new product development. This required an understanding of human perception and what our brands meant at an emotional level to our customers. It wasn’t all to do with price but about what the perceived value of the brand was.”

From the bevarage industry to the emerging alternative medicine sector, Gary saw his opportunity to put his business acumen to use in his own company. Setting up ‘Aromatherapy Plus’ following a chance encounter with an aromatherapy expert he created his own brand, a network of sales agents and a series of party packages which helped him build a successful enterprise:

“When Bass uprooted its corporate offices from London to the West Midlands, I was offered a good redundancy package and used it to set up the business.”

“At that time aromatherapy was just beginning to become popular and through my work with Bass we had approaches to get oils into the hotel rooms of our sister company ‘Holiday Inn’.

After two years he sold the company:

“One of my suppliers made me an offer and I just felt I had taken the company as far as I could.”

Gary found himself redundant again aged only 30 and his career was about to take another twist:

“Reading the Guardian I saw a job advertsing for a Chief Executive for an international language school. With my experience in business management and history as trained teacher I thought I would givre it a shot.”

Spending most of his time travelling the world recruiting students, Gary saw first hand the growing demand for English as a foreign language:

“The British Council would help us get in touch with schools in the various countries but we also had links to embassies in 60 different countries and we would take on the language training for diplomats and their children. Our residential courses would help prepare them for life in English schools.”

During a trip to St Petersberg, the demand for English within Russia became clear:

“Russia was an emerging market and the demand from the newly rich to study English was growing. Going to the UK to study however remained too costly for many potential students and when the company decided against opening a school in Russia I thought it was too good an opportuntiy to miss out on.”

Headway Communications was born and in under a year the company had 20 teachers servicing industry and schools from Moscow to Siberia.

With three schools in Moscow and clients including Rothmans, Hewlett Packard, Cadburys, Mars and Hurst Publishing demanding business English instruction the business soon eveloved to include a strand of marketing instruction:

“A lot of graduates came out of university speaking basic English and looking to take up jobs in Western companies but had no marketing skills.

“There had never been a real need for marketing as we know it under the former regime. With pricing fixed and ‘Factory no. 5’ commissioned by the government to make a certain product there was no competition and therefore no need for competitive marketing.”

The bust came in 1999 when the Russian economy crashed. With the rouble devalued, Headway Communications’ profit margins were squeezed as its foreign teachers were paid in US dollars:

“It was hard to see all that hard work destroyed overnight and in less than three months we had to get rid of all the staff.”

“Many of the FMGC companies that stayed downsized in terms of manpower and literally in terms of products. Liptons made smaller teabags and Mars bars became smaller.”

Gary turned back to his marketing roots and worked as consultant, helping out companies with their survival marketing strategies before finally returning to Wiltshire as a business mentor in 2002.

One of his major projects in which he is still involved is a niche online business selling larger sized ladies shoes.

Always with an eye for a new opportunity Gary returned to his native North East in 2004 as an advisor for Social Enterprise Northumberland and in 2005 with the support of the Northumberland Care Trust set up Dinamic Ceramics in Ashington:

“Dinamic Ceramic manufactures bone china mugs, thimbles and coasters for tourist outlets across the North East region and is as a Social Enterprise helping people on incapacity benefits enter the job market.

“Having been lucky enough to be involved in successful businesses in the past, I wanted this new business to be more socially aware and more in harmony with its surrounding community.”

Although it’s a career that spans interests in a diverse range of sectors, Gary recognises a commonality in all:

“It’s all been about marketing and getting the message right.”

One might say, its advice that has rung true for his businesses and language students alike.

Origin of English words...

A computerised survey of 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary was published by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) which estimated the origin of English words as: