Throughout the pandemic, Leicester based distributor continued to service the needs of the UK photographic print industry and remained in constant communication with their customers through phone calls and a series of informative e-newsletters. We chat to Marketing Manager Craig Bird to see how the business has fared over the past 18 months and how they are looking to a positive future.

Hello Craig, it’s been a tough period for the UK photographic industry and retail in particular, how have Tetenal managed through the pandemic?

Hello! Yes I think it’s safe to say that these have been challenging times for everyone in the industry but we met the challenges head on and decided to remain open throughout the whole pandemic, albeit with reduced staff numbers, to ensure we could offer continuity of service to our customers who needed us.

We’re a company who have always prided ourselves on customer service and value and the enforced lockdown gave us the opportunity to look at the business, assess where we were and where we wanted to be in the future.

Have you implemented many changes to the business during this period?

Tetenal has always been a company that is forward-thinking and in MD Mike Fawcett and the rest of the Management Team we have people who are constantly looking at ways to improve the business.

It may be a cliche but any business really is only as good as the people who work in it and we’ve been able to take a step back to look at where we could implement new practices for the benefit of our team whilst also bringing in additional knowledge and fresh thinking with a number of key additions to the company.

It sounds like an exciting time for Tetenal.

To be honest, it is. In consultation with all of our staff, we’ve recently published a new Corporate Vision with the tagline of “Proud of our Past – Driven by our Future”.

We’ve set in place some Core Values and a shared vision for where we want to take the business whilst encouraging all of our team to continue to develop personally and professionally. It’s more important than ever in this day and age to be respectful and supportive employers and this in turn will hopefully help the business, and the individuals within it, to thrive.

You mentioned that you’ve added new members to the team at Tetenal, can you tell us a little more about that?

Yes indeed! Our long standing Account and Product Manager Mark Wilkins is now enjoying a well earned retirement but our new additions bring a wealth of photographic and print knowledge with them.

Analogue photography continues to be a growth area with film stock disappearing of our shelves as soon as it arrives, such is the demand. With that in mind we appointed Gemma as our new Analogue Product Manager to deal with all our key photographic dealers.

Beth joins us as our new Account Manager for the South, whilst Aren is responsible for producing content for use across all our marketing activities including the website which is continually being developed and improved.

Completing the new arrivals is Kevin who brings with him a wealth of experience, gained over many years in the photographic industry,