David Wood

Irish International: David Wood

First up…

Meet David Wood, Head of Sales & Marketing, Contract Residential Furniture

Nationality
Northern Irish!

Birthplace
Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Ballymena and moved up the north coast to Portrush to attend the University of Ulster at Coleraine.

What did you want to be when you were a child?
For most of my childhood I was a keen farmer. When I moved away from home, I realised that the options available to me were much greater outside a career in agriculture. That got me thinking!

What is your official job title?
Head of Sales and Marketing, Contract Residential Business.

What do you actual do?
The majority of my time is spent in the UK promoting and selling Farrell’s residential products and services. Over the past few years, I have been spending more time in Ireland doing the same to the home market with the Irish team. We have small closely focused teams, working both in Ireland and the UK.

Where are you mostly based today with work?
I am based in our UK office. It is a lovely old converted formed Primary School in a rural village in North Yorkshire, between Leeds and York. I really like working from there.

What do you like about your job?
Being in Sales and getting out and about all over the country it’s about seeing new places and meeting new people. There is literally no part of Ireland or the UK that I have not visited – our projects are spread out far and wide. We even completed a project a few years ago on the Isle of Benbecula, a remote Hebridean Island off the West Coast of Scotland. Just prior to that we completed the furnishing of a large international school in Dilijan, Central Armenia!

What is your favourite hobby / past-time?
I enjoy watching Rugby and spending time with our dogs and horses.

What is your ‘guilty pleasure’?
A few pints in our local village pub catching up with friends and family is a rare but welcome treat.

Who is/was your idol / role model?
My old History teacher at school. He is a work hard and play hard man and did not suffer fools lightly! He still enjoys a few pints on match day at our local Rugby club in Ballymena.

What is the one thing you are most proud of?
Having the courage to leave Ireland and my family during very difficult times and seek out new opportunities and make a new family life in the UK. I am very proud of our family and my Irish wife and two grown up children who were born in England but see themselves as part of an Irish family.

What do you like most about working for an Irish Company?
Irish companies have a slightly different outlook and approach to those in the UK. Being Irish you can associate and understand the way they operate. It is all about the Customer and the experience and making sure we are putting them first and enjoying what we do!

What is your personal experience of working at Farrell?
As a family business you learn very quickly that the way to get things done is to explain and deliver on the benefits of looking after the customer. Do a good job and leave the customer feeling good about his experience and he will always come back.

What do you think about the Furniture Manufacture sector?
It is less about product and more about service in our sector. Our business has become more of a service provider and less of a product provider and the trend is moving very much towards a “one stop shop “approach. Farrell understand the change that has occurred in our sector and as a business we have become much more critical and selective in our approach to securing and delivering on New Business.

What Irish-traits do you think you have (if any)?
Loyalty, hard work and a good old sense of humour.

What do you miss most (if anything) about your home/country/town/place you are from?
I really miss being able to go down the town and know and be able to chat with nearly everyone you meet. We have lived there for 35 years and in the same small village for the past twenty years and we still only know a handful of the locals. As they say in Yorkshire, you’re not a local until you have at least five generations buried in the graveyard!