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Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

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Just for go for it: Why it’s time to reach out and grab new opportunities, despite COVID – Pauline Dawes, Managing Director of SOMI Trailers

Picture of a SOMI trailer

Pauline Dawes is managing director of SOMI Trailers, which utilise patented technologies and advanced engineering to create 31% additional load capacity, without adding to the overall dimensions of a standard trailer. The advanced load management mechanism can position extra cargo an additional eight pallets into previously unused space within the trailer. SOMI’s innovative design could also lower carbon emissions by 25% per year by eliminating one in every four road journeys, potentially saving millions of pounds.

Pauline Dawes - SOMI Trailers
Pauline Dawes

 

 

 

 

 

 

“COVID has made us all realise how we take for granted so much … from hospitals to home deliveries, and what will it look like when we settle down to the new normal? I hope more women will take on the roles in transport as they look for a career change.”

What a year

Wow what a year! so much has and has not happened! The biggest thing that has happened to me since I last spoke with Womanthology for me was personal, I married the love of my life last year at the top of a lighthouse in Scotland.

The business is gaining strength but was hindered by COVID as the logistics and particularly transport focussed on ‘just getting it delivered any way you can’. The key things I have seen are:

  1. We are short of drivers and I mean trucks and vans, although watch this space as I am hoping to do something about this…
  2. In the industry decision making layers have been reduced from 12 to two as office staff and everyone has been going out there and getting hands on.
  3. Forget about trying to change the world – it is changing fast all around us and some strange decisions are being made!

About SOMI

My product, SOMI (Same Outside More Inside) is a revolutionary new trailer that includes the space underneath. We do this by having a deck in the middle that goes down into the lower space and then the back one lifts up and slides over the other one to make a second level. The reason we do it is to take one in four trucks off the roads whilst still delivering the same amount.

Pauline DawesIt saves 150 tonnes of CO2 per truck per year. Your house produces 5 tonnes and a car 10 tonnes, so it’s vital to change the thinking on which trailers to use, a difficult task in a conservative industry. The planet needs a lot of friends who are prepared to change their ways and it all happening too slowly for me.

Winning a Women in Innovation award with a £50k prize changed my life

Innovate UK is a great source of information and grantsInnovate UK has another Women in Innovation Award coming up. Go and apply now for the 2020 awards (£50,000 cash) if you have a good idea you want to turn into a business or develop to become a reality. It is life-changing. It was amazing for me. I’d already created the trailer by then and the £50,000 prize really made a difference.

I went across to the states and toured some factories there. I’ve also been out to China, and wow, what a difference from 12 years ago. I’ve been a few times, but the quality is better than us for a lot of things now, which is quite scary. It is one hell of a lot cheaper as well.

There’s so much you can do through Innovate UK and the connections are brilliant. I’m still now in monthly contact, if not more often, with one of the girls there from Northern Ireland. It’s great fun meeting with the women who are so inspiring and refreshing! They have webinars and networking/coffee events regularly too.

It’s not about the winning…

Awards are great to lift your team – even if you don’t win, it highlights just how far you have come and what you have done and how much growth and skills you have achieved. When you do it is the best publicity. Sometimes I have been nominated without knowing or I have put SOMI forward to show our product to the top people there who have paid a huge amount to attend the posh dinner! To see the faces of the team when we are there is worth all the effort.

bananas in supermarketFor the IGD (Institute of Grocery Distribution) Supply Chain Excellence Award I was put forward by somebody else, and then I had to go and do the presentation down south. I persuaded the CEO of the company who makes the mechanism for me to go with me very posh place down in London, and we had a long interview, etc. Then we went to the presentation awards.

It was then I found out that the other finalists were Mars and Nestle, and then there was us, this tiny company from the north. We had five staff they had 20 staff just working on their bid. So, that taught me that your quality of idea can be appreciated. It isn’t always the big boys that win (or big girls), but it’s about confidence. It’s about having a go.

Picking our time

Our plans for Europe will still go ahead after Brexit. It’s too difficult with the pandemic to reach out without stuttering progress so we will wait. However, the USA have shown interest after speaking at the huge supply chain show in Atlanta I have a lot to progress with a view to licence and export.SOMI Trailers

The trailer is only four metres high. In the UK you can go over four metres provided you don’t hit the motorway bridges, which are 4.9m. So, there’s something called a double decker, which is like two stacks on top of each other, but for the whole of Europe, Asia, the Americas, 4m or 13 feet two is a maximum height. So, our trailer is a one and only world first in that respect that we carry a third extra by utilising that space at the bottom underneath.

Time for a change of career?

COVID has made us all realise how we take for granted so much … from hospitals to home deliveries, and what will it look like when we settle down to the new normal? I hope more women will take on the roles in transport as they look for a career change

There’s one final thing I’d like to leave with you if you are thinking about doing something new. When you were two years old and learning how to eat or before that you saw a huge birthday cake on the table. Did you start worrying about which knife which fork to use? So, had anybody else had any yet? No, you didn’t. You just went in there and grabbed a hand for you put your face in it or something. Because you just went for it.

We lose that ability as we become socialised, and that is a shame because confidence is hard-won for women. So, I would say just put that image in your head of a small child seeing a birthday cake and sticking their face in it and enjoying it. Just do it now and then you’ll be surprised how good it makes you feel. When you realise how much you know about your industry, your work, it doesn’t cost anything to pass it on either.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauline-dawes-22007b86/

https://somitrailers.com/

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