Building trust has played a key role in the success of Young’s Seafood Ltd., which now has a turnover close to GBP 600 million (EUR 819.6 million; USD 892.5 million), according to Wayne Hudson, managing director of the U.K. company’s frozen business.
Speaking at a London conference on building trust in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, called “The Great Debate – Building Trust,” organized by international customer management consultancy Customer Attuned, Hudson said to be trusted, “all you have to do is what you say you are going to do — always!”
“At Young’s Seafood, we are committed to building trust with our customers and continuing to embed, and reinforce it in our culture, values and behaviors. Be it trust in the quality of your brands, trust in the quality of your cross functional customer management teams or trust in the quality of your people overall, it really is the key to building deeper more interdependent and sustainable B2B relationships,” he said.
Hudson highlighted the role that Young’s “Fish for Life” corporate social responsibility (CSR) program has had in nurturing trust with multiple stakeholders, and outlined some of the steps he has taken within the business, including how he has set out a new vision for the frozen business, improved the quality of some key lines and brought back some iconic lines within the portfolio while at the same time reducing the complexity and number of SKUs overall.
He also stressed the importance of building commercial capability, aligning teams as well as building plans from the bottom up and top down to ensure that trust is embedded and gathers serious momentum both internally and in the customer base.
The 210-year-old company is the leading supplier of frozen and chilled seafood to the U.K retail market. It employs 3,000 people across multiple sites and sources more than 30 different species of fish from five continents. The Young’s brand, across both frozen and chilled, is worth more than GBP 231 million (EUR 315.5 million; USD 343.6 million).
