What the invoice did not explain about the cloth

Two rolls could share the word blue and still have no practical relationship to one another. One might meet a customer's approved finish and width; the other might be unsuitable for that customer's equipment. I first encountered that distinction through a disputed invoice at Carrowell Industrial Cloth, where I joined the accounts office in June 1989. I had finished my accounting degree at Mardenwythe College of Business the previous month. The ledger showed a sale. The customer-service team could explain why the customer did not regard the delivery as the thing it had ordered.

My work began with credit notes, receipt allocation and account reconciliations. I was not qualified to decide whether a fabric met a technical requirement. I could make sure that the account reflected the decision of the people who were qualified, and that an unresolved question did not disappear beneath a convenient payment explanation. I learnt to take a product description seriously. A few characters in a specification could explain why material remained unsold or why a replacement had to be made even when the warehouse appeared to hold plenty of stock.

In June 1995 I joined Merrowick Technical Fabrics as a cost accountant. The company made more specialised industrial products, and I had to learn new processes from plant colleagues. I followed the cost of a run through material, setup, finishing and conversion. The standard account was useful only if its assumptions remained relevant to the actual product and batch. I asked supervisors to explain differences and tried to preserve their reasoning in the next estimate. That work taught me to be careful when a favourable unit cost depended on making more material than customers currently needed.

I became a plant controller in June 2002. The appointment gave me responsibility for a small team and for the financial explanation of one site's performance. I sat in production reviews where a schedule could improve the month's absorption while adding stock with a narrow future use. The plant manager had legitimate reasons to value stable runs and predictable work. My task was to make the inventory consequence visible alongside those benefits. I learnt that a productive disagreement needed a shared account of the constraint, not a finance instruction to optimise a different number.

In June 2009 I moved into product and commercial finance. That role brought customer commitments into the same discussion as plant economics. A custom order might justify a dedicated material purchase, but the contract needed to explain what happened if the customer's requirements changed. I worked with sales and legal colleagues on that question without treating finance as the owner of the customer relationship. I also learnt that a deposit could be useful while still leaving us with substantial exposure. Its presence did not remove the need to understand the remaining commitment.

My appointment as vice president of finance in June 2014 added group planning and control across the three plants. We needed a common financial account without erasing the differences among their products and processes. I worked with site controllers to make significant estimates traceable and to compare capital proposals on assumptions that operating leaders recognised. Some proposals became less attractive when the transition effort or product-approval sequence was included. That did not mean the projects should always be refused. It meant the board could decide with a clearer view of the work that remained after buying equipment.

I became CFO in June 2019 and joined the holding-company board in November 2020. The family owners wanted continuity, but they also wanted a more explicit discussion of which product lines deserved further investment. I helped connect those choices with inventory, customer commitments and the practical capability of the sites. The slow-moving stock review was uncomfortable because it acknowledged that some earlier expectations would not be fulfilled. I preferred to recognise that evidence and change the next purchasing decision rather than allow the old carrying value to become an argument for making more of the same material.

My board experience is executive and rooted in one industrial group. An external role would require me to understand a different product, ownership context and operating culture. I would bring a habit of asking what makes an asset useful and what evidence supports the next commitment. I would not claim that textile experience qualifies me to approve another manufacturer's process or product safety. The financial question can travel across industries; the technical answer often cannot. That distinction is part of the judgement I would want a chair to examine before considering me for a seat.

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