OK, so I arrived at Danzas on 2 January 1997 and this was a risk and this is why. I had moved from Kuehne & Nagel, a company with established air freight services, a large and solid operation and market leading pricing to a company with loads of potential but with a low profile in the local market. I'd been given all the assurances by their sales director that I would be able to be competitive and that was absolutely vital if we weren't we certainly wouldnt gain any new customers in what was already a very competitive marketplace in the UK North West.
There was one thing which gave me confidence. Chris Fahy, the regional direcor for Kuehne & Nagel was also joining Danzas UK as their new UK MD and as I'd worked with him at K&N for 7 years, I knew he was very sales and customer oriented and would move heaven and earth to transform the customer offering for new sales people like myself and Peter Devonshire, who joined on the same day.
It didnt take long for Chris to make an impact and after not too long, we were gaining new customers and Danzas in Manchester was on the radar at Manchester Airport. After a year, I was asked to become the Northern Sales Manager and our sales team included Peter Devonshire, Clare Brackenridge and a sales support person whose name I cant recall.
We used to really value our clients and organise training events and social events such as Sportsmans evenings, where we'd take our key customers for a night out just to thank them for their support. These events werent expensive but they were great value and the customers felt truly valued. It certainly created a great deal of loyalty and to this day, I believe that customers really notice when you go the extra mile for them and it's certainly a principle I have carried through into my new business, Straightforward Consultancy, where we have retained all our customers since our launch in 2010.
In late 1998, some big news hit the radar. The German Post Office, Deutsche Post made an offer for Danzas which was accepted. Their vision was to create a global logistics provider and buying Danzas was just the first step.
In 1999, they then purchased a large American forwarder, Air Express International who were a huge player in the UK with a big market share, particularly on air freight from the USA. Earlier in the year, they also purchased ASG International, a Scandinavian freight forwarder with a very strong UK business and another forwarder Nedlloyd.
In 2003, they purchased Airborne International, a strong forwarder on USA eastbound particularly into the UK and then in 2005, the big one, they purchased Exel Logistics for around USD 7bn.
My career in the meantime was going well. in 1998 I had started doing some part time trade lane development work on the USA Mid West in addition to my UK Northern Sales Manager role. This meant I could restart my trips to the USA twice per year but this time, rather than cover the USA East Coast, I would develop the USA Mid West (Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Cleveland etc). At the same time, Peter Devonshire began developing Hong Kong and Taiwan in the same part time capacity. It was actually very good for our careers and our confidence, as although it was very demanding, we raised our profiles outside the UK and gained more experience and status.
After we merged with AEI, in mid 2000, the company immediately became far bigger, as AEI was at the time (as I recall) the largest air freight export forwarder in the UK and the merged company had a lot of resources and expertise. I was then invited to apply for a new role, this was as Head of Trade Lane Development for the UK and I was successful. I then began to build a team of sales development professionals who would spearhead our growth to and from key markets such as Asia, Latin America, North America and the Middle East. This tied in with a desire by senior management to create a global Trade Lane Management structure. We would then target growth of our air freight, LCL ocean freight and FCL ocean freight volumes between the country pairs, eg USA UK or UK Hong Kong. I quickly built a large team of people, with a core of around 5 people full time in their TLM roles, and the remainder of around 5-6 carrying out their roles part time (regional sales).
Enough for today, I will tell you more about the transition to DHL Danzas Air and Ocean in my next post.
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