1:00 AM 24th December 2024
business
Christmas Spotlight: Jenni Ashwood
Yet again for 2024, we’re bringing back our popular festive spotlight — featuring regional businesspeople from across the north. We’ll be quizzing a notable name with 10 quickfire questions.
Jenni Ashwood, marketing director, Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery is our penultimate business person to answer our questions.
1. Reflecting on this year, what “gift” or lesson from the business world has been most valuable to you, and how will it shape your approach next year?
Great teams make companies great. Whether that’s team work internally or with our retailers and partners in the UK and overseas. It’s been a harder year than anticipated for all in the whisky and wider drinks industry but by working on relationships as well as sales, we’re finishing the year on a high. This includes a lot of jokes and laughing at each other/ourselves too!
2. If you could give one Christmas wish to your team or industry as a whole, what would it be and why?
Low interest rates and less rain in the spring?! More seriously, it would be a gift of time to sit back with a dram and have a chance to reflect on all the good stuff.
3. What’s one “holiday tradition” your business observes each year that helps boost morale or reinforce your company’s culture?
We do a Christmas party in the early Spring, and it’s a really nice thing to look forward to, once all the madness of actual Christmas is past.
4. As you look ahead to the new year, what are three things on your “business wish list” to achieve or improve?
Get ourselves out and about even more, to talk to more people and give them whisky to try! That’s our most effective sales technique because often, even the most adamant ‘I-don’t-like-whisky’ person will try our Filey Bay Flagship and say ‘oh wow, that’s not what I was expecting!’
There’s always more to do regarding our environment and sustainability. This year we added a wildflower area to the front of the distillery which looked fantastic, and there are lots of ideas to bring to life around other parts of the distillery too, inside and out.
We’ve got a couple of secret projects bubbling away in the background and if they come off, we’ll be delighted!
5. What “gift of wisdom” from a mentor or peer has influenced your leadership style this year, and how do you hope to pass it on to others?
My friend Fflur works in crisis PR and her mantra is ‘respond don’t react’ … the corporate equivalent of counting to ten and thinking before you speak. It’s helped me on so many levels, from Customer relations, to purchasing decisions, to HR too!
6. In the spirit of giving back, how does your business or team plan to make a positive impact in the community this holiday season?
In the Autumn, we installed an AI-powered accessibility widget on our website, which transforms it for different user needs at the click of the button or cursor. We hope that this will make shopping for Christmas gifts a much better experience for all our customers, regardless of needs.
Our sister company Wold Top Brewery is supporting Active Filey, a brilliant community sports organisation run by volunteers, by sponsoring the medals for their 5km beach run on the 29th December. And come the Spring, the Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery will be sponsoring the Active Filey series of Cycling Time Trials too.
There are lots of raffles and events at this time of year, and we try to support these with our prizes wherever possible – including at events like Martin House Hospice’s ‘Glitter Ball’ in Boston Spa where our prize raised over £150.
7. What new “gift of technology or innovation” would you most like to see emerge next year, and how do you think it could benefit your industry?
Getting to grips with AI more to help with the admin of the team, so that they can crack on and do what they do best – passionately talking about and pouring Filey Bay Whisky – without having to worry about anything else like manually inputting contacts and data. It’s already used for some aspects of our accounting and has made doing expenses much simpler for example.
8. If you could leave one “stocking stuffer” of encouragement or advice for emerging leaders in your field, what would it be and why?
If in doubt, go back to basics. And make sure those are done as well as possible. They’re the building blocks for success but often easy to overlook or move past too quickly.
9. What holiday tradition or activity do you personally look forward to most each year, and how does it help you recharge?
I love the Christingle service in Burton Fleming each Christmas Eve – our vicar is the most wonderfully brilliant lady and she has everyone laughing and singing, and when the lights go out and the children hold the lit Christingles, it’s really magical. Followed by drinks at my best friend’s parents’ house on Christmas Eve evening, which has been a thing for the best part of 30 years now. For me, this marks the start of Christmas celebrations proper and means I can switch off for a couple of days.
10. If you could deliver one “Christmas miracle” that would transform your business or industry, what would it be, and what impact do you think it would have?
People shopping with smaller, independent retailers for the majority of their gifts and entertaining needs over the Christmas period. There are so many fantastic small and brilliant producers in Yorkshire and beyond, and in the hectic hurly burly of the season they’re sometimes overlooked in favour of convenience and price (myself included in this). A gift from a local company goes a long way, building awareness, bringing money into the community and supporting local jobs, with long term effect.