Two weeks ago Kieran and I had the pleasure of meeting Bob Griffin - the Managing Director of Tomcat. Tomcat is a unique business, which offers a truly exceptional service to its customers. With over 30 groundbreaking innovations, Bob Griffin and his team specialise in making custom built trikes for all abilities, but are widely acknowledged for their expertise in supporting complex and severely disadvantaged riders. Through dedication and innovative designing, Tomcat has an almost 100% success rate in allowing disadvantaged riders to cycle. Designed to support both the rider and the carer, these easily assembled trikes have made a huge difference to thousands of individuals and this was exemplified in the hundreds of thank you cards and letters on their office walls.
Inspired by personal circumstances, what makes this business so special was Bob Griffin’s unyielding passion for supporting his customers and the deep reward he and his team get from positively changing the lives of the rider and the carer or family. Given the nature of their products, it takes a lot of hard work, time and effort to produce to these trikes, which is only possible with an ethos of ongoing process of learning, and inventing, and overcoming. As such Tomcat offers lifetime support and an unconditional guarantee, inspiring trust and confidence in their customers, which ultimately makes this the distinctive and respected business that it has grown to become.
With a 10 year history of making over 5,000 custom built tricycles, and a number of pioneering designs currently in progress, this business has completely changed the world of special needs cycling. Tomcat is certainly a very deserving winner of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation and I suspect it won’t be the last Queen’s Award for Enterprise that this business receives.
Keep an eye out for the Tomcat video that will be uploaded in the next few weeks. (Update: video added below).
(Read a transcript of the video.)
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