sabc-admin, Author at St Andrews Business Club

Nigel Ford and Steve Spackman

18th February 201421st February 2017 sabc-admin

Our guest speakers will be Nigel Ford and Steve Spackman of St Andrews Coastal Rowing Club. The Club is a new, dynamic group formally established in December 2013, which adopted its constitution and elected its committee the following month.

The tradition of coastal rowing is now enjoying an extraordinary renaissance, beginning in 2009 when the Scottish Fisheries Museum asked local kit-maker Alec Jordan to run a course on boat-building at the Museum. Alec suggested a four-oared Fair Isle skiff as a model, and the Museum commissioned a design from the well-known marine architect, Iain Oughtred.

Since the prototype was built in Anstruther, 150 kits have been sold, with about half of them already in the water in seven countries. The kit demands little more than handicraft or DIY skills, not a team of specialists to build. The cost of getting a skiff into the water is remarkably low, making it especially affordable for community groups and projects.

Coastal rowing is now the most dynamic and fastest-growing community-building and healthy leisure movement in the country. The movement has featured on BBC Scotland’s Countryfile and local news programmes, and the recent World Skiffies (the first Coastal Rowing World Championship, held in Ullapool, July 5-12) attracted considerable press coverage and large turnouts of competitors and enthusiastic supporters.

The Scottish Coastal Rowing Association was formed in 2010, and during the summer, regattas are held almost every weekend somewhere along the coast of Scotland. The SCRA constitution promotes coastal rowing as “a healthy activity which can be done safely by people of all ages at a level suitable to their competence”, while further bringing them into close contact with nature and wild life – goals intended to support national, regional and local policy.

New members are always welcome!

Donald Ford

16th January 201411th February 2019 sabc-admin

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 12 February 2014 at 7.45 am for 8.00 am in Alexander’s Restaurant, Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews. The cost of the meeting will be £10.50 per person. As usual any guest who may be thinking of joining the Club will be welcome free of charge.

Our guest speaker will be Donald Ford of Donald Ford Images.

Donald Ford was born into a sporting family. His father won three Scottish caps at cricket, his elder brother Malcolm won nineteen (both were also talented football players) while his mother boasted a Ladies’ Championship victory at Linlithgow Golf Club.

Football took priority for Donald and in 1964, while halfway through a five year indenture to a firm of Edinburgh Chartered Accountants, he signed for Hearts and then, having passed his CA finals, he signed professional forms with the club.

He subsequently enjoyed a further seven seasons at Tynecastle, winning three League caps and three full Scottish caps to add to nine amateur caps and was a member of the Scotland World Cup squad at the finals in 1974. A knee injury brought his football career to an end.

His cricketing career with West Lothian County blossomed however, and during his third year as captain of the club, he was included in Scotland’s first ever Benson & Hedges squad.

Professionally he continued to practice as an accountant. Increasing legislation from government and accounting bodies added to the considerable pressures on a sole practitioner and he sold his practice in 1991.

He then embarked on a new career in Scottish landscape photography. In 1994 he bought an old property in South Queensferry and opened the Donald Ford Gallery. He began publishing his work and his first Scottish calendar for 1996 went on sale with all 4,500 copies selling out.

Since then, several large books of both his landscape and golf photography have been published, together with diaries, address books and calendars, many of which have gone all over the world.

His work is widely distributed to both private and corporate sources and the annual publications of his Scottish golf course photography, in particular, are now acknowledged as the finest available.

He has gained recognition as one of Scotland’s outstanding photographers of golf courses.

Professor Ian Johnston and Dr Tom Ashton

4th December 201321st February 2017 sabc-admin

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 11 December 2013 at 7.45 am for 8.00 am in Alexander’s Restaurant, Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews. The cost of the meeting will be £10.50 per person. As usual any guest who may be thinking of joining the Club will be welcome free of charge.

Our guest speakers will be Professor Ian Johnston and Dr Tom Ashton of St Andrews University.

Ian and Tom will talk about how they developed a science business out of research carried out at the University of St Andrews. Xelect Ltd is a genetics company providing a range of services to the aquaculture industry worldwide.

Their lead product is a genetic marker that allows salmon to be selected with 5% increase in fillet yield worth around £680 per metric tonne. Xelect has already licensed the technology to leading salmon breeding companies and has products in development for other traits and species. The company makes money from upfront license fees; a royalty on each egg produced and associated genotyping services.

Ian is currently part-time CEO at Xelect and full-time Professor at the University of St Andrews and Director of the Scottish Oceans Institute at the East Sands. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1987. The research which produced the first products of the spin-out company was initiated by Tom during his PhD.

Funding for commercialisation of the research was obtained from the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council. Xelect has also had an investment from SalmoBreed A/S, Norway.

Tom is now Executive Director responsible for the day to day running of the business.

Vivien Collie

3rd November 201321st February 2017 sabc-admin

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 13 November 2013 at 7.45 am for 8.00 am in Alexander’s Restaurant, Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews. The cost of the meeting will be £10.50 per person. As usual any guest who may be thinking of joining the Club will be welcome free of charge.

Our guest speaker will be Vivien Collie, Director, Vivid Ideas and Solutions Ltd.

Vivien has over 20 years’ experience in the fields of economic development and partnership working. She is a qualified town planner with an additional business degree and a professional marketing qualification. Vivien is also a trained mediator and facilitator.

Vivien is also a director of the Fife Food Network. This is a not for profit company established to help local businesses work together to promote food and tourism activities in Fife (www.foodfromfife.co.uk). She is also Chair of the Local Tourism Association, and an active member of her local business association and her sustainable town group.

Vivien is going to talk to us about the importance of the food and tourism sector in Fife – and the aims, objectives and business opportunities of the St Andrews Food and Drink Festival which takes place in November this year.

Graeme Leach

1st October 201321st February 2017 sabc-admin

Our next meeting will be held on Friday 4 October 2013 at 7.45 am for 8.00 am in Alexander’s Restaurant, Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews. The cost of the meeting will be £10.50 per person. As usual any guest who may be thinking of joining the Club will be welcome free of charge.

We have been very fortunate in securing Graeme Leach, Chief Economist of the Institute of Directors and a well known broadcaster and media contributor.

Graeme is regarded as a foremost speaker on the UK and wider economy and his insights are often sought by the UK Government on key issues. While this is only a week or so following our previous meeting, and is at a relatively short notice, we are delighted to have been given this opportunity for Graeme to speak to the Club and it is an event not to be missed if you can make it.

Graeme will talk about ‘UK and Global Prospects in 2014’.

Rosemary Agnew and Sarah Hutchison

16th September 201321st February 2017 sabc-admin

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 25 September 2013 at 7.45 am for 8.00am in Alexander’s Restaurant, Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews. The cost of the meeting will be £10.50 per person. As usual any guest who may be thinking of joining the Club will be welcome free of charge.

Our guest speakers will be Rosemary Agnew, Scottish Information Commissioner and Sarah Hutchison, Head of Policy and Information, whose talk is entitled ‘Access to Information about Public Services in Scotland’.

Rosemary Agnew was appointed as Scottish Information Commissioner on 1 May 2012 for a fixed term of six years. She previously held the posts of Chief Executive of the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission and Assistant Ombudsman at the Local Government Ombudsman, and so is familiar with operating within a regulatory environment.

Her extensive public sector experience (which has ranged from policy and business development to complaints handling) includes managing authority compliance with freedom of information laws.

She has first-hand experience of leading the development of an open culture in a Scottish public authority essential, in her view, to achieving FOI compliance. Rosemary holds a Masters in Business Administration (dist) from Manchester Business School.

As Scottish Information Commissioner, Rosemary is responsible for the enforcement and promotion of Scotland’s freedom of information law. She has a keen interest in developing a framework of continuous improvement of public authority FOI practice during her term of office. She considers that the statutory obligation of FOI can also be an enabler for authorities in terms of both effectiveness and transparency: FOI is the key to many rights and freedoms in our society and also a significant driver to good public authority practice.

Sarah Hutchison joined the Scottish Information Commissioner in 2003. Her role includes strategic responsibility for: improving freedom of information (FOI) practice in public authorities; promoting FOI rights to the public; influencing and supporting cultural change; developing knowledge, expertise and relationships.

Sarah’s previous career includes teaching children with learning difficulties, a formative spell with Oxfam in the UK, leading equality policy in Fife Council and co-ordinating the Fife Community Plan. She holds an MA from the University of St Andrews and an MBA from Heriot Watt University.

Peter Southcott

17th April 201321st February 2017 sabc-admin

The AGM is being held on Tuesday 23 April 2013 at the Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews combined with a guest speaker. The meeting will commence at 5.30 pm with the AGM, followed by the guest speaker and finishing with a two course meal with tea/coffee. The cost will be £10.

Our guest speaker will be Peter Southcott. Peter qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1988 and is a partner at Carters based in their Cupar office.

Since 2002 Peter is a regular presenter at Carters Business Builder Forums (BBF). The BBF is designed for business owners to come together to learnfrom each other and to take action to improve their own businesses. Peter also presents business workshops for Fife Chamber of Commerce. The 2013 Fife Chamber of Commerce workshops are entitled Improve Your Profits by Increasing Your Sales and cover Branding, Marketing, Networking and Sales.

Peter’s topic for the AGM is ‘How to Find, Build and Keep a Positive Attitude’.

You become what you think about all day long. It is not the rain, the boss, the competition, the spouse, the kids, the money or the job – it’s you! And it always has been. Your attitude to life, to work, to relationships determines how successful you will be. You will need to come along to discover how to find, build and keep a positive attitude.

Tanya Ewing

21st March 201321st February 2017 sabc-admin

Our next event will be held on 28 March at the Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews, at 5.30pm for 6.00pm and is a joint event of the Institute of Directors (IOD) and the St Andrews Business Club. The cost will be £12 for members and non-members of IOD. Tea/coffee and sandwiches will be provided on arrival.

This will be a presentation by Tanya Ewing, founder of Ewgeco.

Tanya`s story of how she created the product and the company is a fantastic example of showing just what we can each achieve if we put our mind to it.

Tanya was a housewife in Perth thinking about she could reduce the household energy bill by being able to monitor usage in real time, rather than waiting for the quarterly bill.

To her surprise she found that there was no such product available in the market – so she decided to go about making one. It was not easy and like most new businesses it took some time to generate orders.

Word of mouth recommendations helped as businesses and homeowners realised that the capability to monitor usage real time can enable changes in behaviour to be made immediately, producing some substantial savings in usage and cost.

The product enables real time measurement of the consumption of water, gas and electricity, and has variants for both the business and homeowner market.

Significant investment has been made in to the company and it is now a fully fledged operation, growing rapidly as we all feel the effects on increasing utility prices. The examples are eye-opening.

Bookings and payment are to be made via the following link only,

https://www.iod.com/Connecting/Events/Ewgeco

Jim J. Davidson

1st March 201321st February 2017 sabc-admin

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday 6 March 2013 at 7.45 am for 8.00 am at Alexander’s Restaurant, Best Western Scores Hotel, St Andrews.

The cost of the Meeting will be £10.50 per person.

As usual any guest who may be thinking of joining the Club will be welcome free of charge.

Our guest speaker will be Jim J. Davidson.

While at school Jim invested in his first property and became a property owner and landlord at age 16. He has ever since had a keen interest in property observing the ups and downs of the market for over 40 years.

When Jim left school, after a short time in the hotel industry, he entered the retail industry. After 10 years and three companies later Jim left a senior management position to start his own business. Since then he has become a bit of a serial entrepreneur.

His first business started in 1983 was a pioneer in the Convenience Retailing revolution. It grew from one to five locations by 1991. In 1991 he sold up and moved with his young family to Florida.

While in Florida he owned three businesses and he also continued to invest in property in the US and learnt how to make money in property no matter what the economy was doing.

In 2000 he returned to his native Scotland and entered early retirement.

However soon bored he took on the Master Franchise for Kleenaword, a Dry Cleaning company.

In 2003 Fyneside Developments was started, a Property Development and investment company. Jim uses his skills in Property, Public Speaking,

Leadership and Coaching to continue to build his business and to assist others who want to build a property business or to simply build a one off house for themselves. His business essentially has three divisions: Property Development and Investment, Property Networking and Property Training.