Gloucester golf trolley manufacturer Stewart Golf is expecting more growth in 2022 despite ongoing supply chain challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and uncertainly following the war in Ukraine.
And it has paid tribute to specialist Gloucestershire bookkeeping firm BookCheck for helping to make it all possible.
In October 2021 Stewart Golf walked away with International Business of the Year at the inaugural SoGlos Gloucestershire Business Awards.
Judges were impressed by its performance through the early part of the pandemic, which saw total sales grow by 93 per cent. Exports to America quadrupled to $2 million (£1.45 million) in the first half of 2020 alone, UK sales grow by 33 per cent, and European sales up by 16 per cent.
The company, which has been in business for more than 20 years and now exports to more than 45 countries from its 10,000 square foot Quedgeley factory and offices, has always sought to innovate and continuously improve its products.
It is a strategy that paid dividends post-pandemic when it was able to swiftly redesign its technologies to cope better with stresses on the supply chain for specific electronic components.
‘Less glamorous, but equally important’, is work to futureproof its business processes including moving all its IT infrastructure into ‘the cloud’ – and Stewart Golf has paid credit to the role played by Stroud-based BookCheck.
David Funnell, managing director of Stewart Golf said: ‘In the middle of it all last year we also decided to migrate our accounting systems from Sage to Xero. Everything needed to keep running smoothly for the business to keep functioning.
‘I have known this to take as much as three months, but BookCheck managed to have us up-and-running the next day. There was still work to be done, of course, but we were very happy and it enabled us to keep moving the business forward.’
BookCheck used what it calls its Migration plus Add-on Development (MAD) service to transfer the firm’s back-office systems.
Funnell added: ‘There are currently huge challenges with supply chains which are making planning incredibly tough, not just for us but for everyone. We would definitely be growing faster otherwise without those challenges, but we will still do very well this year and we will still grow.’
Stewart Golf expanded its factory and warehouse space by 50 per cent in February 2021 and doubled its staff team to cope with the ongoing demand for its Q and X Series electric trolleys and R1-S Push trolleys.
