Father and daughter drive business development in Scotland

Left to right: Demi-Leigh and her father Martin Paul, of ISD Solutions

A father and daughter team have completed a stunning first year developing business in Scotland for cold store, firewall, cladding and single envelope specialist ISD Solutions.

Martin Paul, who has run his own composite panel installations company in Glasgow since 2003, was appointed to develop and manage the business in Scotland for ISD Solutions in April last year.

He was joined by his daughter Demi-Leigh, aged 21, who is now a trainee estimator and started working alongside her father as a bookkeeper for his former business eight years ago.

Largely as a result of the appointments, the past 12 months have seen ISD Solutions almost doubling its workload in Scotland, taking on 42 projects compared to 13 the previous year, with the combined contract value rising by 89.5 per cent.

Mr Paul and the management of Gloucester-based ISD Solutions now plan to develop the company’s Scottish operation, aiming to take on more project management staff and grow the team further.

The 38-year-old’s previous company, MP Insulations, will continue to be a subcontractor for ISD’s ongoing and future projects in Scotland.

ISD Solutions has designed, implemented and maintained a range of projects in Scotland over the past year, from small projects to major installations for clients such as Lidl and Farmfoods.

Mr Paul said that customers in Scotland – smaller companies as well as large ones – can now benefit from ISD’s many decades of cold room experience and cutting-edge expertise as well as, crucially, the company’s ability to source products at industry-leading prices.

He said: “Scottish customers rightly prefer to buy skills and labour from Scotland when they can and it was becoming clear that, despite the sales opportunities for ISD Solutions, our business development was being hampered by a lack of presence here.

“So I’m delighted for ISD, for myself and Demi-Leigh and for our customers that we’ve had such a successful year. The perception of the company has changed and it’s made a great difference.

“Our challenge now is to further develop the ISD name and promote our products and services to the huge market that exists here.

“What I want to make clear is that I’ll continue to use subcontractors based in Scotland for our installations, supported when we need it by the experience and expertise in Gloucester.

“We’re also able to pass on to our customers the benefits of the purchasing power of ISD Solutions – indeed, now that I’m working directly for the company then the cost savings are even higher than they were when people were dealing with me previously.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to develop the company here – for me personally, it’s a chance to scale up the skills and experience I’ve developed over the past 15 years – and I’m proud to be working alongside Demi-Leigh to make it happen.

“We’re building some great relationships and already starting to do business with some much larger companies, who we have been targeting for a while and now have added confidence in us.”

Tony Wall is Group Managing Director for ISD Solutions and was responsible for recruiting Mr Paul and his daughter to their new positions.

He said: “We were delighted to establish this new relationship with Martin last year, having worked with him in Scotland via his previous company, and of course the results over the past 12 months speak for themselves.

“To see such a spike in business in Scotland over a relatively short period is extremely encouraging for us and only bodes well for the future. We are confident that Scotland offers our company a great opportunity for further development and we are excited to bring the benefits of our products and services to Scottish businesses.”