July 2015

WARWICKSHIRE MEANS BUSINESS

The Long Marston company that is already a Rugby World Cup winner

When the Rugby World Cup is staged in England this Autumn it will be, first and foremost, of course, a festival of sport. A once-in-a-generation opportunity for sports fans in this country to see the world's best rugby players.

But the benefits brought by the tournament will far transcend the world of sport.

The potential economic boost for any country hosting the tournament, or any great sporting event, is vast. It is estimated that the 2015 Rugby World Cup will pump up to £2.2 billion into British economy with around 500,000 international visitors expected to generate £869 million of expenditure.

That is why sports governing bodies - and nations - invest such colossal time and effort in pitching for the right to host those events. There is the kudos and the sporting glory - but also the massive business opportunity.

And that opportunity exists not just for businesses in the cities where events take place. It is there for any company in the country with a quality product or service to offer and the energy, reputation or contacts to clinch the deal. 

That's why, when the grandees gather for England's opening World Cup match against Fiji at Twickenham on Friday September 18, they will do so in hospitality suites assembled in south Warwickshire.

Long Marston, to be precise, which is where husband and wife Ross and Karen Kennedy created PDK Exhibitions in 1999. Sixteen years later, the business is going strong. From strength to strength, in fact. PDK is a small company which, to use a sporting analogy, punches seriously above its weight.

This rural business has therefore been supported by a micro-enterprise grant through the Warwickshire Rural Growth Network (RGN). The Rural Growth Network is managed by Warwickshire County Council on behalf of the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and is funded by Defra. The micro enterprise grant scheme is allocated to micro-enterprises, businesses with less than ten employees. 

PDK's design and construction services have been deployed at many of the great sporting events including Lord's Test matches, Wimbledon, British Grand Prix, Ryder Cup and Henley Regatta and major global gatherings for the aeronautical industry like the Paris, Melbourne and Bangalore Air Shows.

And their main project at the moment is The Rugby World Cup for which they are fitting out 22 suites and two cafes for the Twickenham complex in north London.

It is a contract which much bigger operators than PDK would love to have. But Ross Kennedy is not crowing about it. He's happy about it, of course, but in a quiet way and also, in a quiet way, totally confident that his team will deliver the job to total satisfaction.

And that's the mentality that has underpinned the company's strategy from day one.

"I think a lot of bigger companies take their eye off the ball," Ross said. "They become too big an animal and can lose a bit of focus when it comes to dealing directly with customers. "We are secure as a business because we have a lot of clients which come back to us again and again. We are still quite small and very happy to remain that way because we are totally confident in what we do: delivering what the client wants and delivering it on time

"The Rugby World Cup is a huge project for us. It is probably about ten weeks work and we will take on about 20 people for it. We start putting it together in Long Marston and will then take it down to Twickenham."

So how did a deal at a global sports tournament arrive at a business based in a village deep in the south Warwickshire countryside?

"It came out of a conversation at the Ryder Cup in Gleneagles last September," said Ross, who began his career as a trained carpenter. "We fitted out a suite there and a guy from the Rugby World Cup saw it and liked it and we started chatting. It's great that it all came together."

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