This month we interviewed our Head of Supply Chain, Seonaid, after she returned from a trip to China to visit some of our factories! Read on to find out how Seonaid manages the Reid Supply Chain to make sure our customers get the best possible service.

Could you sum up your role at Reid in one sentence?

Ensuring our customers get the products requested, on time with the quality, value and service they expect from Reid.

You recently visited some of our factories in China, could you tell us a bit about what you got up to on this trip?

Yes, I was in China for 5 weeks!  It had been a while since anyone from Reid had visited – since before Covid, so it was really important to visit as soon as we could.  I visited all of the factories within one region and we discussed how we could develop our systems and processes to work more efficiently together. I also looked at their production lines and QC to see where we could make improvements and visited some parts suppliers to check on quality. 

What was the biggest highlight of your time in China?

So many! My top 3 would be; 

– Meeting the contacts within our factories was easily the biggest highlight.  I don’t think you can ever underestimate the power of meeting face to face and getting to know people offline. 

– Seeing one of our new models run through the production line and loading process.

• Checking and loading our samples for Eurobike and then being in the UK when the container arrived for unloading. 

At Reid we are always striving to be better, what are your Reid goals for 2023?

One of my biggest goals for 2023 was to get out to see the factories, so… check! Another is to improve quality and efficiency by putting in place new processes and since we agreed on these during the China trip, we are already seeing improvements on this.  

I would also like to gain better product knowledge of our bikes as I would like to understand all of the terminology more!

What are the biggest challenges you encounter in your role and how do you overcome them?

Inaccurate data has been a problem, and the only way to manage this is constant communication and strong organisational skills.  The Supply Chain team have a call with our main factories first thing every morning to go through any problems and will then try and resolve as much as we can before end of day in China. 

If you could try out another role at Reid for the day, what would it be and why?

I think it would be Leon’s role, our Product Manager who designs all of our amazing bikes.  As already mentioned, my technical knowledge isn’t great so it would look interesting! But I would love to be able to design bikes as well as he does!

What new product/range/project/development is in the pipeline that you’re most excited about?

I love the KADe, especially in grey, and would love to see a mini version in our future range.