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Chairman's Report
Download the 2003 Inclusive report and accounts (39k pdf)
Gordon Brown sailed up to us and shook
hands. He is a big man and was being towed around the packed bar by a very
small woman with a large clipboard.
"We are Inclusive Technology we produce software for people with disabilities and …"
"Assistive Technology" he broke in. "I know … I know what you do". The clipboard lady tugged hard, she was at nearly forty-five degrees".
"Keep up the good work - I like what you do" he said and smiled. Another tug and the great man was gone.
There were a hundred people in the room. The Chancellor would have been briefed and, they say, has an astonishing memory for detail. Even so we were taken aback … compared to the others in the bar we are very small beer.
Small, but growing fast. This year Inclusive Technology grew by 46% bringing our sales up to £5.3 million in the UK. Our American company Inclusive TLC, Inc. completed its first full year of trading with sales of $2 million. Our training and exhibitions company, Inclusive Consultancy and Training Ltd added another £1.2 million bringing annual group revenues up to $12.8 million.
For the second successive year we have been in both the semi-finals and finals of Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Awards and Deloitte's 2002 and 2003 Fast Fifty technology companies in the North of England. Out of the hundreds of technology companies who entered we were number 28, six places up on last year.
In Britain Trish Hornsey, our Managing Director, won £1.4 million in contracts to supply equipment to make UK Online accessible to disabled people. Our operations staff worked out new logistics for this regional roll out while our information team flew around the county training the recipients. We are a major supplier to the Communication Aids Project delivering the right assistive technology directly into the hands of individual learners - exactly where it is needed. This is an excellent government initiative well led and administered by Becta.
In America, our company president, Janet De Senzo, has stabilised the new company in a difficult post-acquisition period and is building the standards of sales and service that bring repeat business and rapid growth.
The third founder of Inclusive, Roger Bates, has thought up and specified successful new AAC devices which we then produce in partnership with specialist manufacturing and assistive technology companies. New major projects are on the way.
Our feet are now planted firmly in the two major markets for assistive technology: the United Kingdom and the United States. Our expanded software development team is producing exciting additions to our SwitchIt! Range which launch simultaneously into both UK and US markets. Meanwhile our extended market reach attracts distributorships for leading American assistive technology companies. We are now the exclusive distributor for both IntelliTools and AMDi with, we hope, two more top distributorships in the offing.
In just five years since our MBO we have become the leading UK assistive technology supplier by a substantial margin. Within five years we intend to achieve this in the United States too. Already our attention is turning toward the Euro market. Next year the European Union's GDP will reach $10.5 trillion dollars passing the economy of the United States. Our planned Euro initiative should find the right person or company in each European country to promote the new technology that can help disabled people in learning and living life to the full.
Martin Littler
Chairman and CEO
October 2003