Thirty years of Genmar — and one very good night out
Genmar IT turned 30. We got the whole team together with their families, ate fish and chips, handed out some trophies and said thank you properly. Here's the night in photos.
Sun Microsystems. Compaq. Netscape. Phones 4u. Blockbuster. What do they all have in common? None of them made it to 30.
We did. So we shut the laptops, booked the rugby club, invited the whole team plus their partners and a handful of long-standing clients, and spent an evening doing something we do far too rarely in this industry: stopping to say thank you.
There was a fish and chip van, a singer who played two sets, an awards ceremony hosted with more heckling than professionalism, and a company photo taken at the exact moment everyone had a drink in their hand.
From the speech
Genmar is older than all of this
The company was founded in 1996 by our MD's dad and his business partner Terry, fixing and selling computers out of a much smaller operation than the one we run today. To put that in perspective, here is a list of things that did not exist yet.
- Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth
- Broadband
- The word “podcast”
- The Euro
- Emoji
- Energy drinks
- Bagged salad
- Crocs
- Stuffed crust pizza
Any muppet can run a business that already exists. Building one from nothing, and building it well enough that thirty years later there is a room full of people listening to your son talk about bagged salad — that deserved the round of applause it got.
Thirty years in, the thing we're proudest of isn't the technology. It's the fact that the same people keep turning up, and the same clients keep trusting us.
Thirty years, counted properly
30
Years in business
Founded in 1996. Still here.
25
People in the team
And still growing.
300k+
Support tickets resolved
Across three decades of UK businesses.
1/3
Of them in the last 3 years
100,000 tickets, with the people in that room.
A third of every support ticket Genmar has ever resolved was resolved in the last three years, by the people in that photograph. James also went looking through those 100,000 tickets for the ones raised by customers ringing up purely to say everything was working beautifully. He found none.
The Genmar Awards
Twenty-odd trophies, several of them 3D-printed
Every department put forward awards, judged on real numbers where we had them and pure office folklore where we didn't. Golden envelopes, genuine surprises, and a few trophies printed in-house by one of our own engineers.
Support
The people who answer the phone, close the tickets and calm the chaos — recognised for customer satisfaction, calls taken, workshop repairs and documentation nobody else wanted to write.
Projects
For the engineers who take on the hardest migrations, push into new technology and finish flawlessly when the pressure is on.
Sales & Account Management
For looking after clients properly rather than just selling to them — margin, quotes won and new businesses brought on board.
Admin, Accounts & Management
The invoices chased, the projects orchestrated and the moving parts held together while everything appeared to be on fire.
Rising stars & innovation
For the newest members of the team developing fastest, and for the people dragging the rest of us forward with better ideas.
And the less serious ones
3D-printed trophies for the reigning Bandle champion, the Geoguessr specialist, the office's single biggest investor in sausage rolls, and the person keeping the coffee machine in permanent service.
The night in photos
Select any photo to view it full size
Mostly, this was a thank you
IT can be a thankless job. The work happens behind the scenes, and when it is done well nobody notices at all — no phone call, no ticket, no drama. Without our engineers, admin team, accounts team and account managers, systems that UK businesses depend on every single day would simply stop.
That thank you extends to the families who put up with the late-night migrations and the weekend cutovers, and to the clients who have trusted us for years — some of them for most of those thirty years.
Here's to the next chapter.
Thinking about who looks after your IT?
Thirty years, 25 people and 300,000 resolved tickets of experience, all based in the UK. Have a straightforward conversation with us — no sales pitch, just practical advice.