Malcolm Harris

Fresh start

Malcolm Harris gave himself a fresh start at 55 years old following a sales career marked with redundancies. Instead of taking early retirement, he launched his own business and took a foundation degree in Business Management at University of Staffordshire. Now, as a “one-man band”, his annual turnover has reached almost £300k and he’s receiving buyout interest from his own customers.

“I had been made redundant four times by the time I was 55 years old,” Malcolm said. “There was no other company that I could go to in this industry that I thought would want to take me on at 55 so I decided to set up my own business. I thought it was the only option left open to me.”

Malcolm launched PolyMech in 2006, as a distributor of engineering plastics to a wide range of sectors, including food processing, materials manufacturing and handling, as well as sub-contracting to machine shops. He signed up to a course at University of Staffordshire to learn about running a start-up and also worked part-time jobs at the Royal Mail and Autonet Insurance while he got his new venture off the ground.

Plastics career

Malcolm has spent 40 years working in the engineering plastics industry, in a variety of sales roles. Originally from Alsagers Bank, Staffordshire, he attained an entry level mechanical engineering qualification at Newcastle-under-Lyme College, but quickly learned his interests lay in problem solving rather than the hands-on toil of his first job in Etruria, in Stoke-on-Trent.

“I wasn’t very interested in the engineering side of it but I was good at coming up with ideas and technical problem solving,” he explained. “After several jobs I knew I couldn’t go very far with the qualification I had, so I applied for a sales role at Pampus Fluorplast, despite having no sales experience. They took me on a 3-month trial and trained me. I didn’t have to get my hands dirty but I could go around solving problems for customers – I loved it.”

Malcolm started the job in 1979 and spent six years with the company. He then spent 13 years at market leader in engineering plastics Polypenco, before they moved their manufacturing operations abroad and his job was made redundant. Following six years at Flourocarbon, he was made redundant again during a UK-wide recession. Redundancy number three came at Gapi, where he’d spent four years, following which he had a short stint as national sales manager for an East Midlands company before deciding to set up on his own.

Foundation degree

Now he works from home offering technical problem solving services and sourcing engineering plastic parts for a loyal customer base of “genuine friends”, he explained. In 2009, PolyMech was named as a top 100 start-up business in the UK wide Barclays Trading Places Awards. Malcolm places great emphasis for the success of his business on the help, advice and guidance he received at University of Staffordshire when he began his foundation degree in 2007.

He said: “I have a lot of fondness for University of Staffordshire because the institution was instrumental in the success of PolyMech. It gave me a network of lecturers and fellow students who I could associate with and run my ideas past – that was invaluable. I had a lot of support and it gave me the confidence that I could be a managing director.

“From the beginning, I had the goal of growing the business to a point where, at 63 years old, I’d be able to sell it and retire. However, I’m 65 this year and I enjoy running PolyMech so much and it’s running so well and efficiently that I’m not ready to let it go.”

Course studied

Business Management

Year of graduation

2009