Fife firms attend Amazon Innovation Accelerator free training event

The Accelerator – which has been rolled out in six locations across the UK – provides businesses with free training and a unique behind-the-scenes look at how Amazon has scaled its operations in the UK.

Participating businesses from Fife included McDonald Water Storage from Glenrothes and The Cress Company from Dunfermline.

Participants benefited from in-person training workshops delivered by senior Amazon leaders, site tours and demonstrations of the latest technologies being used by the company. Businesses also benefitted from a series of virtual masterclasses about how they can create an enhanced culture of innovation within their own organisations.

“Our aim with the Amazon Innovation Accelerator is to support UK businesses to grow and create a culture of innovation within their own organisations,” said Amazon’s UK Regional Director Neil Travis. “We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from a pilot in 2023 and are excited to have expanded the activity last year to six locations across the UK, driving growth in businesses like McDonald Water Storage and The Cress Company in Fife and further afield.”

Amazon also worked closely with the Fife Chamber of Commerce on the design and delivery of the programme.

Stephen Percy-Robb, chief executive officer at Fife Chamber of Commerce, added: “It has been great to work with Amazon on the Amazon Innovation Accelerator, to support small businesses in and around Fife.

“The Accelerator is a great opportunity for small businesses to have direct access to and learn from a large business like Amazon who are known for innovating as they’ve grown. We are excited to see how the businesses in attendance implement the tools from the workshops in their own organisations.”

McDonald Water Storage is one of the businesses that attended the accelerator in Dunfermline.

McDonald Water Storage in Glenrothes is one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of hot water systems, particularly copper hot water cylinders.

The family-owned business is managed by Jamie Stewart, with plans for his nephew, David, to take over the day-to-day running of the business in the next year. The 80-year-old business has been in the Stewart family for 50 years, with David’s sister also currently working at the company and his father acting as Chairman.

The business is at an exciting point of growth, with increased interest in heat pumps and renewables expected to drive a need for the kind of bespoke water tanks McDonald Water Storage can supply.

David’s goal for the company is to increase its turnover to eight million in the next two years, whilst maintaining a healthy work/life balance for his family and his employees.

David attended the Amazon Innovation Accelerator to gain an insight into the innovation practices at Amazon that could be useful for McDonald Water Storage as it scales.

Speaking on his key takeaways from the event, he said: “An online chat assistant is something we've talked about in the past to try and remove stress from our internal sales team. If that task was automated, it would allow them to focus on proactive tasks like chasing orders and finding leads.

“One of the Amazon Web Service (AWS) tools that was talked about at the Accelerator provides exactly that, so it was interesting to hear about how it works to handle mundane day-to-day tasks. I’m keen for us to digitise the business more, so it was helpful to hear so much about AWS during the Accelerator.”

David also highlighted how hearing about Amazon’s innovation principles helped him think differently about how to view the business processes at McDonald Water Storage.

“It was reassuring to have Amazon affirm some of the practices we already do at McDonald Water Storage, and have them named,” he said. “The two-way door model for decision making – which means if something doesn’t work you can pivot back to your original design – is something we already do, but now I have a term for it.

“I was also encouraged by hearing about Amazon’s continuous improvement amidst constant change, which is helpful when thinking about the decision-making process of innovation. Simple things like taking a step back to see where pens go on packing stations so that team members can reach them easily, was a simple, useful idea for me to implement in our business.”

Sharing his final thoughts on the Amazon Innovation Accelerator, David said: “You're hearing first hand from senior people within Amazon about what the company does, including the ways it helps local communities.

“It was encouraging that they want to help local businesses around them to grow, become more successful and employ more people. Then everyone's winning. I definitely took methods we can use away with me too.”

The Cress Company, based in Dunfermline, is another business that attended the Dunfermline accelerator.

The Cress Company distributes ambient and chilled speciality, artisan foods across the UK using a fleet of dual temperature vehicles. The company supplies a range of independent retail customers including delis, cafés, farm shops, garden centres, butchers, fishmongers, bars and hotels.

Joe Wall founded the business in 2004, offering a distribution service to niche food manufacturing businesses. The business gradually grew and is now the UK’s leading distributor of ambient and chilled retail fine foods.

Rodger Caldwell is operations manager at The Cress Company. He attended the Amazon Innovation Accelerator in Dunfermline. Rodger shares some information about the business and gives an insight into why he attended Amazon’s Dunfermline event.

“We have access to a wide range of products we’ve got from fairly unique suppliers. We get products into marketplaces that wouldn’t normally have access to them. This combined with our level of service has got us where we are today,” he said.

“The logistics of doing a next day service are quite broad and complex, which is something I don’t think any of our direct competitors do. We deliver to Northern Scotland, and right down to Kent and Cornwall, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It’s a fairly unique service that we offer.”

“We’ve grown quite quickly, and our processes have been more informal. We’ve been reactive rather than proactive, so we’d like to try to adopt a better structure and mindset to start thinking ahead. That was our main reason for attending Amazon’s event,” he added.

Rodger shares a few key takeaways he and Joe got from the Accelerator: “The scale of Amazon is mind-blowing. We were all a bit awestruck that there are teams of people looking at innovation – that was amazing.

"We went away asking ourselves, can we replicate that at our level? We’re toying with the idea of having even a small group of people meeting regularly to discuss how we can be constantly changing and innovating.”

“As a warehouse lad myself, the Amazon building itself was the stuff of dreams,” Rodger continued.

“The environment is so comfortable, there’s a bit of music on in the background. No one looks stressed, because everything has been set up for ease of use by the employees. I thought that was impressive.

“I also really enjoyed talking through the process of continuous improvement and how there’s lots of different ways to approach a task, depending on what you want to achieve. I liked that this mindset isn’t fixed, it’s flexible. This is a different approach than anything I’ve seen before.”

Rodger hopes The Cress Company can implement some of these learnings in the coming months.

“In terms of next steps, there will be plenty of opportunities in the next six months as we are at the very beginning of implementing a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system,” he said. This will allow us to review our processes and start to take on board what we learned at the Accelerator. I’d really recommend the programme to businesses looking to innovate as they scale.”

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