Barratt Redrow’s Post

Transcript

Good morning. Hello. Good to see you, Chris. Nice to see you again. Got your makeup on, so I have a little bit on last night. Love you. Good thanks. How are you? Is this exciting? Let's see. We're surrounded by lots of historic pictures. I recognise quite a few of them actually. This one at the back where he's driving his truck and just his jeans. Absolutely no PPE. Could you imagine us doing that now? Ready to celebrate 50 years of Redrow? Can't wait. Let's get a party started. It's amazing being part of the journey with Redrow. It's a big blooming book. It's like this is your life. I tend to run through the history of Redrow with a lot of my customers because I just love the way that it started. I be like, do you know, in 1974? And then you'd hear, ohh, here we go again. I'd always looked at the Redrow brand as being the pinnacle of home building Redrow were always on the radar when I was been working in the housing industry. And they're always an inspiration. My first day at work, I turned up in a pinstripe suit to find Mike, Steve Morgan, Simon McBride. All in jumpers, jeans and wellies. I can remember again in the early days the fax machine coming in probably think I'm a dinosaur, don't you? Absolutely not, Caroline. No, no, no. I have great memories of being welcomed in greeting everyone from construction and directors to site agents and they've helped me along massively. 1990 when I started it only just become mandatory that you wear hard hats on site. Strange to think that that's the way it was. I always remember my first day the amount of people that came up and said hello to me and said. Everyone looks after each other here I feel really welcome I feel really looked after I feel really cared for for me Redrow always felt like a family ohh massively yeah absolutely we just seemed years ahead and everybody really wanted to aspire to to kind of come and live in a Redrow home and noticed an image there of the of the the two addresses which formed the name Oh yes yeah Redwood Drive Harrow Drive for me it's not a case of what's necessarily changed but it's what hasn't changed at Redrow so the basics of the company and the culture. I think it's all the technology in in the houses, yeah. I mean, we're putting air source heat pumps and things in now aren't we? You know we used to have speakers in the in the ceilings. Do you remember having those? We used to call them party houses. And now you've got the interactive screens. But it must be so easy now for the customers to come in and visualise what they're going to see. So go on. Any memories of Steve? Did you see him? Ohh, yes, quite a few times, of course. Yeah. Yeah, he used to come in and everybody used to be Steve's coming. I was, yeah, petrified of meeting Steve Morgan. And I didn't boil the kettle and I made him a cup of tea. So he had a stone cold cup of tea. Did he get he got a helicopter? Helicopter was everywhere. Yeah. The the pilot was always there. Every opening he was there yeah, the the opening of the office. I remember Steve said to me. So can you just take the pilot around? I'm like, of course I can! There's no one in the company that never met Steve in their career, whether their career was a short career with us or a long career with us, he made his presence known and the attention to detail from Steve. Without a shadow of a doubt. He'd just walk in and he'd know straight away. That those, the plans were wrong. So what would you say is your favorite house type? I'm gonna go with the Oxford Lifestyle because I think it's just quite a classy look and it's got a walk in wardrobe and that's just got to be the best thing. It still wouldn't be big enough for your clothes though, would it? It's gotta be one of the lifestyles. I'm gonna go Leamington Lifestyle. I think it's gotta be the Highgrove. I love the Highgrove. The Highgrove just because of its pure scale in the entrance lobby. The Worcester is my favorite one. Bit biased there because I live in one. The Henley, my favorite house type, is a sold one. We talk about it so often about the pride that people have been working for Redrow. A lot of it is inspired by the end product we produce that I can go back to a development in 20 years time and look at it and say, wow, we did that. We are unique in our mindset and our product. It's the Redrow way. It's the Redrow way. Sounds like, did you read that from somewhere? We'd heard a lot about Redrow because Wes knew Steve Morgan, he was in school with him. July of 1983. That's when we moved in, nice summer's day. There's my letter, 24th of January 1983 enclosing a check for ��100 deposit. Yeah, it's nice to that we've been part of it for so long. Really. I mean, I can't believe it has been 41 years for us and and 50 for Redrow. You know, I am interested in the the heating. You've got the heat pump. Like say, I used to be a heating engineer. Our house is actually gas free. Yeah. We don't have any gas at all. You'd be out of work anyway then. I'd be out of work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can log in. You log on to your - you make a My Redrow account. OK. And yeah. And it's got everything there. So it's got, you know, if you want to upgrade anything, you just click it, put it in your basket and pay for it. Put it in your basket! Yeah, There's no reason why we need to move. Yeah, this. It's sound A little cliche, but I'd say it's our forever home. Umm, yeah, that sounds. Yeah, that's lovely. I always think every time laying a block I'm like wow, I'm building someone's dream, someone's gonna live here one day and it's a very heartwarming feeling. It's such a massive part of someone's life. You can drive through a development and know that people are creating memories and you don't see for sale signs cause everyone's really happy living where they live in what makes Redrow so special is the whole aspect around the brand and it's around the customer and their experience, which I know you know even better than I. Yeah, the big smiles, seeing the red bow on their doors, the hampers and everything, the way they just wave at us. I just love it. Amazing. Whether you're at group, whether you are at divisions, it really does feel to me at least that you're only sort of one or two connections away from everyone in the business. We are always ahead of the trend. We are definitely. I think that, you know, we do pave the way for a lot of things and yeah, I'm very proud to work for a company like Redrow. I think you were always a bit of a a role model because, you know, obviously you'd served as an MD of Redrow Northern. You was a hard act to follow. Yeah. And and of course. I'm still proud that you've been able to continue to, to carry on after me and serve as a director too. It always felt like a, almost like a second family environment and I think that culture within the business is what's given it its longevity. For me, it's definitely the people. I think so. I don't think I'd still be here if it wasn't for the team that we've got around us. It's lovely, isn't it? Because it is. You're not just going to work and doing a job, you're actually building, building a legacy really aren't you?