THE TEAM
At the same time Dave ‘Hackers’ Hackford joined the Tushingham team from NeilPryde bringing in a much-needed driving force behind the sales and marketing side of the company. When Dave heard Roger was thinking about acquiring Tushingham back from Bennett and Bowler, he was keen to become more involved in the design, marketing and sales of the equipment and called to see if they could work together. The deal was struck, they both became directors and Dave moved up from Brighton to Yorkshire to get Tushingham re-launched. Roger will be the first to admit that he’s quite laidback and Hackers’ competitive side was essential for them to grow in the market. Incidentally ’92 was the only year that NeilPryde sold more sails in the U.K. than Tushingham, so bringing Dave on board proved to be another shrewd move from the Yorkshire businessman.
The next natural step in the evolution of the brand was to enrol the services of multi-talented sail designer Ken Black in 1993-4. Ken was so busy at the time making his own brand ‘Ken Black Sails’ he barely had time to work on his real passion of design. Roger realized Ken’s talents were wasted so he brought him on board with the sole role as designer while the sails were manufactured in China. So with all three of the main members of the team using their individual talents to their best effect, Tushingham has continued to flourish over the past two decades.
Paul Simmonds joined up in the late nineties and brought on board his windsurfing skills, enthusiasm and general business and organizational skills. Now he is one of the backbones of the team alongside, Luke Green, Sam Ross, Peter Hart, Chris Murray and former British Champion John Hibbard. Now based down in ‘sunny’ Devon (although Roger will beg to differ about the ‘sunny’ bit), an important aspect for choosing their location was so that the offices are close to decent conditions. With virtually every member of the Team a passionate windsurfer, it’s important to the brand that their workforce are able to test sails and catch those epic sessions – even if it means a few late nights in the office to catch up on daily business.