Another new year – and this time it’s a change in the senior management at Spectrecom. Because, after nearly 7 years at the company, Sarah Aynesworth has resigned her directorship. Sarah was a founder director of the company and instrumental in getting us off the ground and to where we are today. Anyone who’s ever tried it knows that starting a company without any customers, any significant finance or capital, trading track record or experience, is an incredibly demanding challenge. The early years are as much about survival as they are about growth. Sarah helped to shoulder this responsibility with guts and determination. The hard work paid off and the company is now a successful going concern, but we really couldn’t have done it without Sarah.

For those soap fans out there who love a bit of drama, I’m sorry to report that there, was no disagreement, no falling out, no slammed doors, no spilt blood on the board room floor! Sarah has simply left to start a family. However, she still has a 22% stake in the company and will retain her role as Company Secretary – and I’m sure she’ll be popping into the studios to check up on us from time to time. 

Sarah’s departure means a management restructure at Spectrecom, and now that we’re up to 30 employees and growing, I’ve asked 2 of the longest serving and most experienced staff members to join Steve and myself on the board. Christiaan Harden has been the driving force behind our online marketing strategy and strong sales performance for the last 3 years, and he becomes Commercial Director. His new brief will see him continue to work ever more closely with the production and post-production teams to develop a distinctive identity for our films. To that end, he has recently recruited 2 talented new creative writers to his team. Ben Franklin, who started out as our first editor, has gone on to develop and manage his own  team of 8 full time editors together with the technical infrastructure necessary to harness their collective creativity. Ben is now Director of Post-Production with a brief to continue to raise the quality bar of our output.

Finally, Steve Milton has taken over from Sarah’s role and becomes Director of Productions. The job description is changed slightly from Sarah’s in that we now have a stronger accounts team and Sarah’s company secretary duties will remove the burden of most of the legal admin work. This will leave Steve free to oversee the day-to-day running of all the work in production. And I’ve promised him that he’ll still have time to pick up a camera and shoot his own work, on his own projects, when he wants to. I feel that’s one new year’s resolution he’ll be holding me to!