If there's one thing we believe in at Maudlin, it's the development of our employees.
Here's a specific example:
Our current head of screen printing production joined the company at the end of 2014 to do a traineeship. At the time he didn't know anything about screen printing or t-shirt printing. Everything was new to him. He worked under another employee for a year and took every opportunity to learn. From face-to-face to online training, he worked night shifts on his own and, due to some setbacks, spent a good part of the 2016 high season working on his own at the screen printing plant.
Today he is our head of production and one of the most knowledgeable people in the company. Even so, he still wants to learn and continue to evolve, so we've been doing a lot of testing of new techniques and he'll soon have the opportunity to do some new training, this time in England.
A thirst for knowledge and continuous evolution is in our DNA.
Virtually every member of our production team has had some kind of training or experience with suppliers where they learnt more about the possibilities of the techniques and machines they work with.
At the beginning of April I had the opportunity to take a colleague for the first time on a training course in England, at the international distributor of the brand of direct printing machines we work with.
Although we had been working with this technique for a few years, we felt that we had to learn most things by trial and error and that there were still some internal doubts and ways to improve our work. As I've lived in England and have some contacts, I was able to organise a training course for this colleague and me, where we learnt all about direct printing on dark backgrounds. From the exact treatment doses, to how to achieve the colours we're looking for more accurately and even adjusting some methods that we weren't doing in the right way. It was a huge learning day and it made us develop in a single day what would have taken us months to do on our own.
I believe 100% that this is how we can continue to evolve and that we will continue to take firm steps forward in the decorated textiles market in Portugal.
As a result of this training, doors were also opened for a second training course at the same venue, now in screen printing and using the best machines and techniques available internationally. We're already packing our bags to return to the UK and learn a little more about how we can optimise our processes and improve the quality of our work.
