We love it when businesses send us their good news and here’s a round-up. Awards, expansion, new contracts or new jobs, if you’ve got some good news you want to share please email the editor, Martin Shaw, on martin@huddersfieldhub.co.uk.
Cricketer Shanz Prangige is hoping to bowl over customers with his new shop – Sports Lockers – in Huddersfield town centre.
Sri Lankan-born Shanz, 36, opened his cricket equipment shop in the Packhorse Centre with the new cricket season just weeks away.
All-rounder Shanz plays for Denby in the Huddersfield Cricket League and knows he has hundreds of potential customers on his doorstep.
But cricket is only the start and Shanz already has plans to launch into other sports.
Shanz started out with a small shop in Pudsey called Cricket Lockers but now he’s moved to Huddersfield and opened Sports Lockers.
He’s started off by selling cricket equipment and clothing for top brands including Adidas, Kookaburra, Gunn and Moore and Masuri but plans to expand into other sports including football, rugby, hockey and athletics.
Shanz said: “I started in Pudsey but the shop wasn’t on the main street. We needed a better location and we believe we have found it. People have been coming in and looking around. They’ve never seen a cricket shop on the high street before.”
Dad-of-two Shanz has loved cricket all his life and started playing when he was about six or seven back in Sri Lanka.
Shanz came to the UK to study and later decided to make it his home. He’s been in the UK for 11 years now and has been playing cricket in the local leagues.
After four years in the Bradford League he joined Denby in the Huddersfield League last year. He’s a batsman and spin bowler but he can also keep wicket.
When Denby were looking for a wicketkeeper he agreed to take the gloves and his performances last season marked him down as one of the best wicketkeepers in the league.
Shanz now hopes to make as big an impression in the world of retailing as he expands his product range and brings more major brands into his shop.
A team of eight walkers from Ramsdens Solicitors’ Holmfirth office took on the challenge of walking 23 miles across Kirklees for the Gardens of Eden Tour to raise money for six-year-old Eden Smith.
Eden is battling neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer which affects around 100 children each year in the UK. Eden and her family are currently fundraising to send Eden to New York for clinical trial treatment and need to raise in the region of £300,000.
The walk, which began and ended at Scholes Cricket Club, was tough both physically and mentally. In wet and windy weather the team completed the challenge in just over seven hours.
Lauren England, junior conveyancing assistant, said: “It was certainly tough, especially due to the adverse weather conditions. We kept in good spirits, though, and kept each other laughing and smiling throughout the day.
“The feeling of getting back to Scholes Cricket Club and seeing Eden’s family there made it all totally worth it. It was so nice to see a community come together for the same cause, cars were beeping us, the public were cheering us on, it was just great.”
Diana Walker, conveyancing partner, added: “I just want to say I am so proud of everyone in our team for what we achieved. It was brutal conditions at times but we made it and have raised over £2,134, absolutely smashing our original target of £1,000. Just brilliant.”
Huddersfield-based and award-winning material specialists The Resin Mill is delighted to launch a brand new product that will transform the installation of outdoor resin surfaces.
The first of its kind on the market, Resin Rox consists of dry premixed and bagged aggregates.
The product comes in 24 different colour blends and ensures the perfect shade every time with every bag, making jobs easier and quicker for resin installers.
They will no longer have to spend time finding four different colour and size stone bags to mix to achieve the desired shade for their customer’s driveway, path or patio.
Scott Haley, operations director at The Resin Mill, said: “We are excited to launch Resin Rox, which will not only simplify the resin installation process for contractors up and down the country but also improve the resin bound surface industry as a whole.
“The idea of pre-mixed aggregates was born after we noticed the gap in the market. We found the mixing of dry aggregates on-site as potentially an area for error and time consuming, leaving excessive waste and taking up unnecessary labour time.”
The product was two years in the making and has gone through rigorous testing processes. It offers carefully sourced materials that are of the highest standard.
Mixing ratios used for Resin Rox are more accurate than labour intensive mixing bags on-site, that is why installers can expect quality materials in every bag.
Thanks to The Resin Mill’s efficient premixing methods, any waste aggregate is eliminated, making Resin Rox environmentally friendly. It also makes resin projects more cost-effective and cuts waste.
Mirfield-based digital marketing and website design firm Fishtank Agency reinvented the corporate identity and created a new website, illustrations, service iconography and bespoke job alert functionality for Yorkshire-based recruitment specialist Glu Recruit.
After a competitive pitch, the digital marketing and web design specialist worked with Glu Recruit to reform the user experience and create bespoke functionalities, among other tactics, to position them away from the stereotypical characteristics of the recruitment world.
With the key objective for the new website to make the job-seeking process more streamlined for candidates, Fishtank Agency’s web development team built a bespoke job alert function to improve registration for job alerts and applications for vacancies tailored to each candidate’s individual skill set and requirements with ease.
The creative agency also strategised the user experience mapping and design around a robust target audience to generate more inbound candidate enquiries to benefit employers across the Sheffield City Region.
Personality and retaining the brand’s Northern identity was an important factor throughout the process, leading to the development of tailored caricatures and iconography, strengthening the brand’s perception and value proposition.
The brand evolution and website were launched in February and have resulted in a 29% increase in new website users and 27% and 15% uplifts in overall traffic and online session duration, respectively.
Rob Shaw, managing director and founder of Glu Recruit, said: “This is so exciting for us at Glu Recruit, and a real line in the sand to kick off a year of growth and new opportunities for the business and all our staff.”
Fishtank Agency managing director Damien Fisher added: “The project with Glu Recruit has been amazing to work on. The team had clear objectives for what they wanted to achieve and we were able to build a website and features around these to support their business goals.”
