Julian Hors|ey said, “I’m excited about getting to know you all and helping in any way I can to grow the weighing business in the UK and Europe”, when he moved from Melbourne, Australia to A&D Instruments in UK to head the weighing business unit for Europe.

He was born in Kent, UK and lived there till age 4, moving back and forth between Hungary and New Zealand and UK because of his father’s business, before his family finally settled in Melbourne when he was 12. He grew to be an Aussie & to love all that Australia represents. Julian summarises his interests as follows: laughter, fitness, flying, motor sport, rum, Asian food, movies, being around positive people, photography, loud music, watching Australia win at anything, cooking, military aviation, people who “have a go”, travel, learning new things, fishing, being part of the A&D family, being part of a successful team & most importantly…... CHOCOLATE!

He extensively traveled around Europe and the UK in recent years. He holds dual citizenship of Australia and UK and is married to Sussan, a lovely wife with an Asian background. Not many people can be more international than he is!.

He has been with A&D Mercury, our subsidiary in Australia, for 11 years. He started his career as dealer sales representative, then became area manager and worked as National Sales Manager for the past six years till he took over this challenge at A&D Instruments. He has created a strong team of sales force and kept the number one position in Australia. Knowing the products and loving the weighing business are a given to him, he is determined to have fun growing the weighing business in Europe.

During the strategic meeting in September 2002, Julian Hors|ey went on to say, “Unfortunately our market is small for MX/MF. The imported statistics indicates the size of the market for moisture analyzers is 120 units at best. We put up 70 units as our target for the coming year”. The number is not large from a financial point of view, but to go after 58% market share was the most aggressive plan among our subsidiaries. He may have been heading for an impossible war if it had been judged based on the past record. Nevertheless he accepted the challenge and jazzed up his sales team. (I learned afterwards he studied the MX thoroughly ahead of time and knew it could be the best performing product in the market. So it was not a challenge just to show how brave he was.)

One year later at the same strategic meeting he reported that A&D Mercury had outsold its target, and he made a most enjoyable and powerful presentation of how his team of people managed to do it. In summary he gave us the top 5 tips; 1. Demonstrate with software. 2. Demonstrate with software. 3. Demonstrate with software. 4. Demonstrate with software. 5. Demonstrate with software. His team of people had done more than just demo, but it was the core of the success that jazzed up everyone involved to outperform the target.

Once in a while he had to remind us during our meetings by saying, “The population of Australia is only 20 million, and we have more sheep than people. We have the number one position here but there is a limit to what we can do”. Well, it is a big challenge but he must be happy that he no longer has to remind us of the fact the market is too small.

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